


Jesus Wept

by FKAHerSweetness



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coquettish Will, Crush at First Sight, M/M, Religious overtones, Sex, Smitten Will, Surrealist, Violence, sexually explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:04:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FKAHerSweetness/pseuds/FKAHerSweetness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord, please save her for me. Do this one favor for me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Attraction

**Author's Note:**

> You see, I've been away for awhile. And I've come back to give you just what you need, just what you need.

"He looks scrawny, I know it," Will's father says, smiling, and with a tone that hints at levity. "But he's a hard worker when he puts his mind to it. Knows his way around a lawnmower too."

            That's wrong. Will knows his way around the one they have at home – the old walk-behind that's been twice refurbished. He knows how stubborn it is, and that you ought to kick it at least twice before there's any real get-up. But what he saw on the way up the property, at the shed on the other side of this grand house far back from the main road, was something shiny and red, something he hasn't had anything to do with before. He's sure his father knows it. But right now, it doesn't matter. This arrangement was already made before Will had ever heard the name Hannibal Lecter.

            "I'm sure he will work out fine," Hannibal says. He stands in the archway of the house that towers above them in the mid-afternoon light, one hand half-curled against the jamb. When he first answered the door, Will was sure this was Hannibal Lecter's _son_ – the man he'd been told about sounded middle-aged, or much older than the twenty-something that stands before them in white and tan, with short cropped hair and shadows in his eyes.

            "I hope so," Will's father says.

            Will tunes out for remaining pleasantries. His father reciting his number for Hannibal in case he's needed – Will notices that Hannibal neglects to write it down, only continues to stare at Will with some puddle-still gaze – and says he will pick Will up, after work. He gives Will a favored smile, one only half-lilted, and ruffles his dark curls with a wide hand. _Be good_ , that smile says. Implores. Will feels half so bad he wants to apologize again, for everything, for everything that's ever happened. And he's half so annoyed that he wants to wrench away from the hand. The latter part takes over inevitably and he jerks his head back, frowning up at the man as he moves away from the grand porch.

            Will watches him at the top of the long driveway. He swings up and into the red Ram, shutting the door and waves again, fruitlessly, through the windshield. Will jerks a shoulder at him, hands stuffed down in his pockets. It's cooling as autumn revs up, and where his t-shirt ends, the gooseflesh begins. The impossibly wide yard stretches out like a green-gold horror.

            The Ram backs down the drive, past the black Bentley, past the long white fence that bars the Lecter property from the road. Will watches as it goes, and he watches until it's gone. Hannibal's voice from behind jolts him, and he turns around to look into that sunless gaze.

            "I'll show you everything you need," he says, and opens his mouth as if to say more. He stops himself and looks at Will, as he did when they first arrived. Will looks at him too: the subtle rise and fall of his chest beneath his shirt, his height, the careful way he stands. Will's never heard this sort of accent before and it's strange; it sounds round, full. Will could say he likes it.

            "Okay." He works a swallow down and takes his hands from the depths of his pockets. "Sounds good."

 

*

 

If he hadn't gotten caught, that would have negated all this. And if he had gotten caught, if he'd been a bit more demure – _You lack demureness, Will_ , that's what his aunts used to say before they stopped visiting – then at least he would have avoided the empty-eyed disappointment his father directed at him. And, _and_ – he thinks with a rotted longing deep in his gut – if he _had_ been caught and he had been _twice_ as riotous as he'd ended up being, perhaps that would have been the best outcome of all.

            Yet.

            Two days ago, Will sat in a tree. He looked out into the cloud-dusted sky, the blue sky, visible only through missing patches in the boughs overhead. The willow in Marsh Cemetery was one of a dozen, each hanging low with the weight of their years. Will's stood high up on a hill overlooking the grounds and a slim line of graves just before the gnarled roots at the tree's base. He'd been sitting there for hours, so long the branch had started a dull ache in the cleft of his backside, even through the jeans. Pockets full of Snickers wrappers from the Exxon. A Coke bottle drained and rolling below him in the dirt. He shifted from side to side, and mostly held his eyes closed. Napped on and off. When his eyes were open, bidden by low whispers from those walking through the grounds and visiting, he looked not five feet ahead of him to check the grave, to make sure it was still there. He did it each time, every time a leaf blew or a car roared by too loud. He did it as if he was sure someone would have come by and desecrated it. But it was there as ever, each time he stirred.

            The long afternoon moved into evening, and he felt the sun's heat through his eyelids. He'd drifted longer this time, hands folded over his stomach, one leg hanging limply down off the branch.

            "Hey! Hey, kid, get down from there!"

            Will startled; only briefly. He recognized the voice as soon as he heard it: rough, quivering with righteous indignation. One of the groundskeepers. It seemed to Will they all had similar whiny voices; trembling and high. And when Will opened his sleepy green eyes, he was rewarded with the man in all his grey overalls, a mustard stain still fresh on his shirt from lunch.

            "What do you think you're doing? This is hallowed ground; it's not a kindergarten cot," he continued on, color rising into those round cheeks. "You can't laze around in here. Go home."

            "I am home," Will said, settling back against the tree branch.

            "I mean it. Christ, look at all this. Littering, too! You oughtta be ashamed, kid."

            "Yeah, well."

            Will closed his eyes again, and the sun filtered through them until red was all he could see – red, and the dark. He heard the groundskeeper's boots shuffle in the grass, feet away from the graves, the willow, the boy in it. Will didn't expect it to go any further, but when it did, he distinctly remembers the seed of thought planting itself in his head: _This could be a way._

            The groundskeeper said after a moment of silence: "If you don't get out of here, I'll call the cops. Get out of that tree now. Get and go on home. I've had two complaints already about some disrespectful boy using this place as his own backyard. I can't have you disturbing people in their grief." 

            Will opened his eyes then. Sat up, wincing with the stiffness in his back, his arms and legs. "Their grief," he said, in tone of wonder and incredulity. "What about _my_ grief, huh? What about _that_ , you fuckin waste of space?"

            The man's eyes bugged, his mouth opened in a perfect o. "Wh-why you–"

            "Here's a complaint for you: some asshat is rolling around the cemetery bothering people with a reason to be here," Will said and balled one fist against the branch beneath him. "I've got more of a right to be here than you do. So why don't you shut your fat mouth before I shut it for you?"

            The groundskeeper's face was cherry-red and shiny in the sunlight. Off on another hillock, there were people previously mourning and had come to a stop. Perhaps Will had raised his voice, he couldn't be sure. What he was sure of was that he'd seemingly hit a nerve, or just grazed it. _Fat mouth_ and _rolling_ ought to have done it. The groundskeeper looked to Will as if he would not rightly _mind_ socking a lithe-bodied boy of fourteen. He looked like he wanted to try – his left boot moved forward in the grass, his hands bunched into tight fists around his rake. Will's eyes lit; if he tried to hit Will, that would really have been something. He would have missed, of course, and Will would have socked him in that bountiful gut of his. Will had not had a proper fight in a while – going on a month.

            But the groundskeeper lost his nerve, it seemed. He turned quickly back for the building off across the field, over the rows and rows of graves and mausoleums. He was muttering to himself, things so tangled together with a thin thread of embarrassment that Will could not take them apart.

            In hindsight, this was the moment Will regrets. He neither pushed it forward – did not pursue the groundskeeper and start a fight – nor did he retreat – go back to school, trying to sneak in before the last period bell. He simply watched the man lope off over the grounds and settled his gaze back on the grave square before the tree. A little while later, a police officer did come – Will looked at the groundskeeper half-hiding behind the man in uniform and his thoughts dripped with disgust – and he recognized Will right away.

            Perhaps if this was the first time he had gone truant in the past year, Will would have been silently let off without the follow-up call that the department made to his school’s office, and then from Principal Downey to his father. But this, Will thinks, may have been the twelfth time. That he'd been caught.

            Still, in the nighttime, standing before his father in their small living room, he did not give any semblance of an apology for the ordeal. His father relayed not only the truancy – the school's only concern – but the Marsh Cemetery encounter, where the groundskeeper had called Will's teasings "threats of violence".

            Will rolled his eyes. Crossed his thin arms over his chest and looked at his father who sat before him in his ratty armchair. The man looked haggard; half mad and half not, like he and Will were doomed to repeat this time and again. He was filthy from the long day landscaping, working in people’s yards and thinking his son was in a classroom, working algebra and chemistry.

            "I didn't _threaten_ him, first off," Will said, tapping his fingers against his upper arm. "And second–"

            "Second, you should not've been to begin with."

            "Yeah, but–"

            "What'd I tell you about skipping? We talked about this," he said, an air of desperation to his voice. Just a scrap of it. "You can't keep going off and doing whatever it is you get in your head. You know better, I know you do. Your grades, Will, and then–"

            "I don't _care_ about my grades."

            "Well I do."

            Will shrugged lightly. He said, "I'm allowed to visit Mom."

            His father looked at him then. The murky green eyes that were reflected in Will's own face. "Sure," he said carefully. "Sure you are. But not during school hours. And you're not to cause trouble, you hear me?"

            Will had given up hope by then. He looked fleetingly at his father's belt buckle; shining dully in the small lamplight from the end table nearby. It looked rusted over, and the man looked smaller than he truly was due to this long working day and an evening hearing of his son's penchant for harassment. Will continued to stare at the belt for a long moment, and finally he dropped his hands from his arms. He opened his countenance, and lifted his chin in challenge.

            "What if I don't hear you?" he asked quietly. "What if I go on doing what I get in my head to do?"

            They looked at each other, and Will felt a tiny sizzling current enter the air between them. His father's gaze sharpened and Will took down a deep breath. He thought any second the man, tired though he seemed to be, would reach for his belt clasp. He would stand up and the black hair would fall from his sweat-dotted forehead and he would take Will by just under one arm and Will would feel that unyielding strength. Still the man of the house. Still the boss. He would shove Will's pants down his legs and bend him, take that smooth leather to him, and as Will imagined these things he felt his pulse speed up, he felt his breath come short and he nearly swayed forward when his father rose from the chair.

            But he passed Will by, declaring in a day-roughened voice that they would discuss this in the morning. They would discuss his punishment in the morning. When he went up the stairs, each one creaking under him, Will continued to stand and stare at the worn armchair like there was still someone to see.

 

*

 

 _Some punishment_ , he thinks now, nearly at a stroll's pace behind the Worldlawn.

            The sun is high at midday and the vast expanse of the Lecter estate lies out around him. He doesn't know much of the man but for the few words they exchanged an hour ago – "I assume you know how to start it," Hannibal had said and Will nodded dumbly, too wrapped up in the man's easy stare to say that he had never interacted with such a machine before in his life – but already the word _estate_ replaces _yard_ in relation to what this place is. There aren't many homes like it in White Hill. Will isn't sure if this even counts – it's spaced far enough on the road leading out to I-65 that it may not be within White Hill limits. Will has been in the passenger side of his father's Ram many times, driving down this road with corn fields and Rippavilla Plantation on the right side; this house and others like it on the left. Until recently, it had been barren.

            He's given up his Saturdays to worse, he knows that much. Though he is stuck outside toiling in the sun, he can see Hannibal Lecter from down here. Just sometimes, when he moves in the windows of the uppermost floor of that Victorian style home. It looms white and stark against the green of the lawn, the blue of the sky. Dappled on the lawn are magnolia trees that Will maneuvers himself around.

            Every now and then, when his back is turned or he's kicking wayward sticks out of the Worldlawn’s path, he thinks he feels something, like a tickle at his back. He glances up at the windows and sees the sheer curtains fluttering, or a shadow moving, and he cannot help the grin that comes to his face. That Hannibal may be watching him to make sure he isn't goofing off or tearing up this high-class mower crosses his mind but he prefers to entertain the idea that Hannibal is looking just to look.

            He wonders what he must look like from the big house. From way up there where the curtains part ever so slightly. The sun bouncing off his dark curls, lightening them through impossible amounts of sweat. White shirt clinging to him, plaid overshirt tied tight around his waist. Jeans heavy from sweat and sliding down slim hips. He wonders what Hannibal thinks about that.

            Will nearly trips over his own foot. The lawnmower jerks and stumbles over something, makes a creaking-crack sound up against the blade and it comes to a stop, Will's collarbone banging into the handle. His hold there keeps him from falling over and he immediately dips to his knees in the shorn grass, biting his lower lip in panic.

            _Fuck, please tell me I didn't break this thing._

            He bends lower, forearms bracing him in the grass. His hair falls across his eyes, but under the shadows of the lawnmower, he sees a particularly thick twig caught in the blade.    

            _Shit_ , he thinks, not without some relief. He angles himself; still on his knees, twisting, right shoulder coming down into the grass. He reaches under the Worldlawn and, straining just a bit, takes hold of the twig.

            He makes a triumphant noise that runs headlong into a pained yelp when he tries to remove the wood and feels the flesh of his palm slice open. He yanks away, falling onto his back, holding his right wrist with his uninjured hand. In the bright sun, holding the hand high, he sees the orange light through the thin webbing of his fingers and the deep red of his blood dripping down the fine curves of his flesh. The colors of autumn.

 

*

 

The door opens even before Will has knocked. He stands again beneath that calm stare, bleeding hand held up awkwardly by his head. His curls are in disarray and his clothes are grass-and-dirt stained.

            "I, uh, goofed a little."

            "So I see. We had best get you bandaged up."

            Hannibal stands aside easily, making way for Will. When he walks in, uninjured hand cupped to catch dripping blood, he looks up into the vastness of the house. The foyer itself is dark and sparsely furnished, and there is a coldness present here which is only so when a house has not been lived in long. There's a scent of dust and paint. Will's father said, just last night when Will was notified of his punishment, that Hannibal, who he met in church, had just moved here weeks ago. But weeks were enough to get some things put up, Will thinks, walking softly behind Hannibal through the grand archway.

            They move through rooms, all equally devoid of much furniture. Will watches the way the man walks in front of him, the smooth gait, the high ridge of his shoulders. His hair is a light brown and in his wake he leaves a soft but strong scent of cologne – intoxicating, lulling. Will can almost place it. Like something his father used to wear, back when he still had someone to wear cologne for.

            "–causing you much trouble?"

            Will jolts. He looks to see the two of them standing beneath the high-ceiling of the kitchen. The vista window behind Hannibal, silhouetting him with afternoon light, looks out onto the wide backyard, fenced only by forest.

            "Huh? Sorry,” Will mutters. He continuously drips blood. "Didn't catch that."

            Hannibal's expression is obscured in the lighting, but he sounds amused. “Is the machine causing you much trouble, I asked.”

            “Oh! No, I mean, not really, I’m not–” He waves the bleeding hand. “This doesn’t usually happen, I’m not– I’m not super clumsy.”

            “Of course not.” Hannibal pauses for a moment and Will cannot tell where he is looking. He moves then, for one of the drawers nearby. Inside, there is cutlery neatly stacked. He moves to another drawer where there are odds and ends – tape, pens, extra hand towels – and even these seem organized. A roll of gauze appears and he holds out his free hand to Will, which Will takes without hesitation. The grip is warm, smooth. Silently, Hannibal maneuvers Will to the stainless steel sink that looks into the window, and he runs cold water over the cut. Will watches his own blood swirl down the drain.

            He falls silent with not much to say, or else he is otherwise entranced by Hannibal's methodical movements – it's as if he is used to someone interrupting him with their injuries. He takes Will's smaller hand in both of his and begins to wrap the now exposed cut tightly. Outside, the light wisps of clouds move their shadows over the green expanse of the back lawn. The trees far behind the house sway lightly in the afternoon breeze. There looks to be so much more now that his hand is aching. Will thinks this is going to take forever.

            Perhaps in response to the clouded look on Will's face, Hannibal says, "There's no sense in you working out there with an injury."

            Will raises his hand. It's fully bandaged and tied tight to the side where his forefinger and thumb meet. "It's not so bad," he says. "I could–"

            "Would you like to help me inside?" He moves back, placing a step between them. "I think it's obvious I need some incentive to unpack. And there is less chance of you hurting yourself here."

            Will is stuck between arguing that he isn't a clumsy idiot and feeling a flutter in his stomach at the open invitation to be close to Hannibal. He bites his lower lip, tenting his eyebrows. "Eh. My dad'll be pretty pissed if he finds out my punishment is some cushy lounging in your house."

            Hannibal smiles. One thin eyebrow rises lightly. "I believe your punishment is simply to help me for the day. You're mine, to do with as I please."

            "Okay," Will says, and barely hears himself say it.

 

*

 

Will comes to decide, over the course of the next few hours, that Hannibal Lecter is easily the best thing to have happened to him – and quite possibly all of White Hill – for ages. He cannot remember being so enthralled in a particular person after having only met them that morning. There's something lurking in the back of his mind; he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Hannibal to suddenly do something lame or boring. Will waits for this. But as he follows the man around the house, upstairs and downstairs and through rooms and under archways, he finds that Hannibal never becomes lame and he certainly never becomes boring.

            As they go through the rooms, Will equipped with a box cutter in his good hand, Hannibal opts to give small histories on the things Will unpacks for him. Lalique vases, a violin, curtains that seem as heavy as wintertime comforters. He has Will take the sheets off of furniture in the upper rooms; a maroon colored chaise, a black lacquered footstool and silk bedsheets that are off-white in color. The material, the heft of them and the way they slide through Will's fingers, remind him of something back home, in his mother's old sewing room. He holds it for a long moment, gently, standing in the dust-swirled ray of light from the window.

            Hannibal, walking towards the door again, looks back at him. "Will? Is that to your liking?"

            Will jolts and softly sets it on the bed. "It, uh. Feels nice."

            "Indeed."

            _Indeed._ That's another thing Will gets a kick out of – in all actuality, he barely listens to what Hannibal is saying. It's going into him, in some way; information has a way of doing that to Will. If it's in his vicinity, it's threading into his ears and lacing itself throughout his brain for later usage or ridicule. But the _way_ Hannibal talks, that's the main thing. Will cannot let go of that. The lilt, the ups and downs of his voice, the roundness of his accent which is decidedly not American, and certainly not from any region of Tennessee. He has only been in town for two weeks but Will supposes everyone he's talked to must have asked him where that accent's supposed to be from.

            Hannibal must stick out like a sore thumb, even before he opens his mouth. His slacks are tan and slightly creased, and he wears dress shoes around the house; a far cry from the jeans and sneakers every other adult he knows wears – even his teachers. Will furtively searches in the boxes for some semblance of normalcy – sneakers, hole-ridden pajamas, a ratty t-shirt – but finds little in the way of this. He emerges again and again with things he would never find in his own home, not the least of which are the paintings.

            Will lifts one of the sheets tentatively from a large square object leaned in a corner. Underneath, he only has time to glimpse the dun-color of the background and some corner of what looks to be a painted dress. In the smallest corner is the signature in a fire-red: _HL_.

            A hand rests atop his.

            "You are quite curious," Hannibal says, leaning over Will. Will feels a heat rush to his face but he is fastened to the spot, kneeling on the hardwood floor. He looks up into that spider web gaze. "I will have to keep an eye on you."

            He does. He keeps his eyes on Will from every angle; Will can feel them. Will takes perhaps an overabundance of pride in this. He notices that Hannibal is staring particularly at Will’s hair, his mass of curls which are nothing if not unruly. Teachers at school and his next-door neighbor Ms. Everson have tutted him on them, muttering that they make him look feminine. Will tells Hannibal how he used to have his hair cropped short. Then, two years ago, while sitting sullen in a chair at Larry’s Barber Shop, he happened to overhear Larry Olsen and another man arguing over whether the plural of moose is _mooses_ or _meese_. So overcome by their stupidity was Will that he finally corrected them, calling them dumb hillbillies in the process. Larry shaved an aggressive patch into Will’s head and kicked him out.

            Will tugs at one curl in the back of his head. “See? It’s all shorter than the others. Never went back. But I sorta like it – like a trademark, or somethin. You get it? It’s cool.”

            Hannibal agrees that it is exceedingly cool and he smiles. Will feels on top of the world.

            The sun has been setting earlier every day, such that it almost comes as a surprise to Will when the sky is a burnished purple and the stars blink shyly in the east at nearing 5:30 PM. By 6, Will is on the front porch again, lingering with Hannibal as the familiar Ram's headlights turn into the long driveway off the road. Will still has in his mouth the taste of strawberries and lemonade from a drink Hannibal made him and he continuously licks at the corner of his mouth, stealing glances up at Hannibal.

            He gets it in his head, suddenly, to ask for this again. But it deteriorates within him as soon as he's thought it up. How would he say it? _Mr. Lecter, if I'm punished again, can you ask my dad to send me back here? Mr. Lecter, could I finish your yard sometime? Mr. Lecter, can I stare at your face all day and all night, forever and ever?_

            A shadow of inner-embarrassment falls over him. So taken by it is he that he barely mutters a "Later," to Hannibal as he bounds off the porch and swings himself into the Ram's passenger side before his father has come to a complete stop. In the dark, he thinks his father cannot tell the lawn has hardly been touched.

            "Let's go, let's get home."

            "Hey, I ought to at least talk to him–"

            "He's got stuff to _do_ , Dad–" And Hannibal thankfully waves once to the car before turning in for the front door. "–and I'm really hungry."

            "Fine, all right. What happened to your hand?"

            Will holds it up. In the streetlights they pass under, back towards town, it illuminates. The bandage still smells faintly of Hannibal's cologne. "Work injury."

 

*

 

The look of surprise on his father's face the next morning can barely be parsed. Will tries not to look it head-on as the man stands propped against the counters of the kitchen, coffee mug in one hand. Beyond him and through the window, the day is young and pink.

            Will stands in the minimal kitchen in the only pair of dress pants he owns, with a button-down shirt not ironed but shaken out. His curls are brushed back with simple sink water, and he tells his father he's ready to go with him to church.

            On the ride over, Will keeps expecting to be asked why. Why, after all this time, does he suddenly want to go back? Will has prepared answers:

            _I thought it'd be nice to see the old place again. See if they ever replaced that awful carpet._

_It's not like I got anything else to do today._

_Just felt like singing hymns._

            Will isn't sure his father would believe any of these. The man is often distracted, he wears bags the size of carry-on luggage beneath his eyes, sometimes Will isn't sure he's hearing what is going on around him, but he isn't stupid. Will's true motives would be scrawled on his face if he even nosed in the direction of wanting to see Hannibal Lecter. But his father does not seem to want to pry; he looks at Will sidelong as they pull into White Hill Baptist Church's parking lot, but he does not press.

            All at once, exiting the car, Will remembers why he stopped going. One of the reasons. Mom was one, sure, and futility seemed to follow naturally, but the worst was the way people looked at him after her death. Him and his father. A year ago, in the wake of the funeral and interment, Will couldn't escape these looks: these Poor Things looks, he thinks they are. White Hill is so tiny, such an infinitesimal speck fifty miles southwest of Nashville, that everyone seems to know everyone and everyone is jostled up against one another's business without much in the way of trying. They all knew Will and his father were alone now, without a woman's deft, smooth hand to guide them.

            These are the looks Will walks through, Will tries to ignore. He moves by his father's side and half-smiles at the women and men who greet him. “Hello, Joshua,” they say to his father and “Willy, welcome back!” they coo at Will. He's too old for head-patting but a woman manages it anyway, her pale fleshy hand as quick as a viper in his curls. Will huffs and smooths his hair back down.

            The wide hollow of the church is alight from wide windows raining in morning sun. Pews line each side of the room and ahead at the pulpit, Pastor Garrett Hobbs readies in his black robes. Will continues to feign ignorance to the Poor Things looks, traveling by his father into one of the mid-room pews and situating himself. He feels a sudden thunder strike in his chest when his gaze falls on Hannibal, who sits on the opposite side of the room and a few rows back. He is stuck gawking, too slow to turn ahead, before Hannibal's eyes fall on him. Even from across a room, that stare is weighted and Will realizes dimly he is half-turned in the pew and others directly behind have stopped giving him Poor Thing stares and have started up with the Strange Boy ones he used to get before his mother's death.

            He turns back in his seat, face flushed, and thinks of it as progress.

 

*

 

It's hard to rubberneck when someone is sitting rows behind you, but Will gives it a shot anyway. It's also hard to do discreetly when half the room is staring at you with Sympathetic Eyes and your father continuously nudges you when he sees you aren't following along with the hymns and scripture. Will is, if nothing else, persistent.

            And he is encouraged. His glances back at the new man in town are not one-sided at all, or at least Will thinks they aren't – _there's no way, he's totally checking me out_ – and so when his and Hannibal's eyes do meet across the prayer-laden room, Will cannot help the toothy grin that comes to his face. At one point, on his way to turning back forward with that grin still in place, he catches eyes with Abigail Hobbs, the pastor’s daughter, who sits catty-corner to him in a pew beside her mother. She is Will's age, bright-eyed and smiling over at him. She even raises her hand in a soft wave. Will resists rolling his eyes and doesn't return the wave. Eluding her in the halls of White Hill High is easy enough, but in church he is glued to the spot. All these reasons for his absence continue to make themselves known but Will considers Hannibal handsome enough to overcome them.

            It's worth it, anyway, just to see Hannibal dressed in all white. Jesus but he does look angelic and it is not lost on Will that the women in the congregation, even the pastor's wife, seem to be half out of their seats in anticipation of sermon's end.

            When it does end, when Pastor Garrett holds the final prayer, Will has barely opened his eyes before he hears the thud-click of women in heels rush from their seats to Hannibal's pew. Will looks over at him soaking in their attention calmly, smiling serenely.

            "He sure is popular," Will's father says, jolting him. "It was just like this last week too. Could hardly get a word in edgewise."

            Will frowns. "You'd think they all'd be a little em _bar_ rassed." He makes no mention of his own scramblings after the man. Besides, that's different. Hannibal is clearly uninterested in the women fawning over him; he doesn't look at them the way he looks at Will.

            When the stampede settles and it is clear enough to break from their seats, Will and his father travel the length of the aisle towards the front door. Will looks back at Hannibal, surrounded by the women, with an expression of agitation and exasperation. They ask him prying things, like is he looking for work and when will his family be joining him. He is obviously rich and alone, Will thinks, and everyone would know that if they weren’t stupid and blind. They move to the front doors and his father shakes hands with Pastor Garrett. The pastor looks down at Will with eyes reserved only for the prodigal son. "So good to see your face in the crowd, Will," he says.

            Will mutters a thank you and ushers his father out before Abigail's roving eyes can find him again.

 

*

 

The best part, Will has always thought, about living in such a minute speck of dust is that everything is seemingly in walking distance. From his small one-story over the Marsh County bridge, nestled almost in the center of town, he can get anywhere on foot.

            He used to have a bike. A Diamondback Cobra, two years back. He road it about, hitched it up to the post at school until someone with bolt cutters came by and stole it. He doesn't really need it anyway – material things slow you down. He's learned that.

            It's nearly 10 PM and the sky is blueblack, just above the sparse cover of the willow. Will sits, one leg crossed over the other. He walked here from his house – the lone window of his bedroom silently pushed open; he dropped down into his mother's dead flowerbed, which is now only mulch and a few weeds. He crept across the drying and dying grass behind his house, up past the darkened window near the house's front which is his father's room. Out of the dense fold of his neighborhood, past Ms. Everson’s, and along the main road that stands like the tree trunk of all White Hill. The cemetery is before him now, his foot lingering inches away from the strong granite of his mother's grave.

            "I'm sorry I missed you this morning."

            Will nearly bangs his head against the tree bark. He turns, one curl catching in the bark, and finds Hannibal standing not far down the hillock. In the shadows moving across his form, he is almost faceless, but Will could not mistake that stance or that voice. He yanks his curl free from the tree and suddenly feels the chill more insistently, feels it whipping through the thin long-sleeved shirt he wears.

            "I wanted to speak to your father, but..." Hannibal continues, and he makes a light shrug. "Well. I don't think I have to tell you what happened."

            "You were mobbed," Will says, and dimly wonders what Hannibal is doing here. Already his mind coughs up fantasies: the man watching him, following him, knowing where he lives. If this should strike in Will notes of fear or alarm, it misses completely, and he feels only extreme delight. _I knew you wanted to look at me_ , Will thinks. He says as Hannibal approaches, "It's no surprise. All those women're only pious for church hours – they're ready to pounce as soon as they see a guy with no wedding ring. They're all the same."

            Hannibal stands near the tree now. He looks up, the moon lighting the plains of his face and Will sighs at the sight. He glances down, smiling. "And what about you, Will?"

            Will blanches. "Me?"

            "There was a young girl who seemed to only have eyes for you."

            "Oh..." Will glances off, shifting his legs together. "Right, yeah. Well, that's just Ra– uh, Abigail. The rest, though..." He glances straight ahead at the grave and is only distantly aware of Hannibal coming to sit on the ground beside him. He feels it in the brief warmth at the left of his body. Will's eyebrows knit as he focuses on her name, EMILY MAY GRAHAM, plated in bronze. "They even hounded my dad. Didn't take more than a month before they came after him."

            "Is that why you stopped coming to church, Will?"

            Again, Will turns and looks at him, and feels his breath fall short. He takes stock of that serene gaze and raises an eyebrow. "You found out from them. They told you."

            "Gossip does seem the town pastime."

            "Jesus," Will groans. "What could they have left to talk about? I guess everything's news to you."

            "I should say so." He's smiling still, and he's so close Will can smell the cologne again. Strongly. Will tries to inhale smoothly as Hannibal continues: "I heard of your mother, Will. I'm sorry about her passing."

            "You don't– you don't have to say sorry, it's– it's been a while anyway. Well. I mean, it's been a while for me, but my dad..." Will's gaze flickers. "My dad. It's like it was yesterday for him, I guess. If you're gonna go around giving condolences, give 'em to him. He needs 'em." Will pauses, and sees that Hannibal does not mean to respond. He continues to stare Will down as if waiting for him to continue and he does: "I stopped going to church because it was my mom's thing, really. I didn't even think Dad believed in all that stuff, and I figured when she was gone, he'd just hole up away from it. But he's been more into it than ever. The past year, the Sunday services, and those Friday night meetings... Well."

            "You don't believe there's any help to be found there."

            Will snorts. He leans his head back against the bark. "Superficial pats on the back and secondhand prayers for you to find peace. That's the only thing there. No thanks."

            "And God?"

            Will's head feels dizzy. Looking into Hannibal's eyes has some strange impact – he remembers a long time ago, sneaking a few sip of his father's bourbon, back when he still kept it in the house. He'd been eleven then and those sips hit him like a truck. _This is what being drunk is like_ , he thinks now. His voice is a soft lull: "And God?"

            "God helps those who help themselves, Will." He glances at the grave marker. "Them and their families."

           

*

 

When Will is climbing back into his bedroom window, he is silent as a cat. As he tumbles from the sill and into bed, he is coated in some tangible emotion and, once again, likens it to drinking. That hazy euphoria that descended on him at eleven, and, when his father smelled the alcohol on his breath, resulted in him bent over the man's knee, jeans shoved down around his ankles. The sting of the smooth leather. The tiny welts that formed along the pale flesh of his backside. Will can remember touching them afterwards, lightly at first, fingers just skirting the edges of bruises. He remembers his mother's gentle voice outside his bedroom door and the hurried way he'd taken his hand from his skin. "You know he doesn't like hurting you, Will," she'd said. "But you can't go doing whatever it is you get in your head to do. There're consequences."

            Consequences. Yes.

            "You hear me?" she'd called.

            Will'd heard her. He said so, in a tone that was moody and agitated. He might have tried to sound tearful but she would have known it to be false; Will doesn’t cry. Her footsteps tread away, back down the carpeted hall. And back then, Will did what he does now which is, with overwhelming tenderness, touching himself. He lies in the ruffled sea of his bedcovers, pants shoved down, one sneaker still on. His shirt rucked up around his birdlike chest. He moves one night-cold hand along the heated flesh between his legs and he smells, dimly, like Hannibal, like that cologne he has yet to name which was, certainly, the scent of his father when once he was married and loved.

            In the cemetery, Hannibal leaned into him and Will immediately parted his lips. But there was no kiss to follow; Hannibal smiled only, that amused expression lit by the moon and given with the deftness of a man who knew what he was doing. Will bet he was absolutely no stranger to it.

            "You're shivering," Hannibal had said, running the back of a knuckle along Will's arm.

            "Wh– What did you want from my dad?"

            "To ask if I might see you again. That is, if you could come help me around the house this week. After school, of course. There is still much to be done."

            _Much to be done_ , Will thought, distantly rolling that cadence around in the halls of his mind. Will could listen to it all day. "Sure," Will said. "I mean, yeah. Definitely."

            "Is that up to you?"

            "My dad'll say yes. It'll keep me out of trouble, I–" He glanced, briefly, at the tombstone. "It'll keep me away from here. Give me somethin to do."

            "Right. Idle hands." Hannibal lifted a hand to Will's hair and brushed a curl from his forehead, and that touch, the surrounding scent of him, is what Will holds onto when he comes in his fist nearing midnight. He thinks of Hannibal's diminishing form across the misty graveyard, and the way his mouth opened on its own.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What could be purer than a boy with a crush? I ask you! But do you know me? Do you know who I am?
> 
> Blog linked on the profile; comments appreciated.


	2. Infatuation

Will isn't sure why he expected anything other than what he got – when he told his father about helping Hannibal after school for a week, there was merely a half-nod, a smile. A "Sounds good, Will," which was muffled behind one hand while the other hung on the steering wheel. Hugging the curb out before the school building, his father slowed to a stop and allowed Will out onto the quickly populating sidewalk.

            "See you tonight?" Will asked. "Mr. Lecter's house."

            "Sure," his father said. It sounded more like a hum. And he drove off, navigating the parking lot and that Frisbee-sized pothole that has been there for ages. Will watched him go with the same scrutinizing gaze he levels at the painting he holds by the tips of his fingers, against the dark maroon wall. A gleam of late afternoon light strikes his hands and the painting’s golden frame. Hannibal's initials in the lower right corner. Will squints, tilts his head. He nods, once.

            Hannibal smacks the nail into place with the hammer, with such force it nearly shocks Will away. He continues and after three hits, the painting is straightened on the wall, hanging serenely. In the light, the girl – _Mischa_ , Hannibal has said – is shockingly beautiful and looks nearly alive by the skill of the painter. This was one of the paintings Will has seen upon his first visit, covered under sheets. She wears a long off-pink dress, her white hands folded over her lap. Hair in wild blonde ringlets down to her back. There are many of these and as Hannibal unveiled them this afternoon, he spoke of her death in a matter-of-fact tone. Gave little detail; only that she was young, perhaps Will’s age. Will gave the appropriate condolences and Hannibal said he would much rather hear of Will’s _living_ relatives than his own dead ones. Thus, Will continues: "How much you wanna bet he's late tonight? Or he flat out forgets?"

            "Surely he isn't going to forget he's left his son with a near stranger." When Will jolts and looks up at Hannibal, the man nods slightly. "It's what I am to you."

            "Dunno about that. He was pretty eager to pawn me off. Always is."

            "Always?"

            Will smirks lightly. He walks around the bare hardwood floor in one of the spare rooms. They have been cleaning, dusting, yet in the sunlight there still exists whole galaxies of dust motes. Will hikes himself up onto a table, legs kicking off the edge. "Sorry you don't feel special, but you're not the first, Mr. Lecter." He holds up a hand and ticks the following off on fingers: "Mrs. Maron, Mr. Barnes, Ms. Everson like _five times_ , Billy Staff up at the hardware store on Eighth. He even made me help the pastor's wife sweeping out the back of the church. That was just after Mom died, before I quit going. Any chance he gets, ever since then, he just, you know. Sends me off for someone _else_ to punish. Like he's not interested, or he doesn't know how anymore."

            Slowly, Will's legs stop kicking.

            "Anyway," he mumbles, "it's nothing. I just don't like busy work, you know. And I don't like that he doesn't know what to do. I mean, he's my dad. Mom's gone, yeah. But I'm still here."

            Hannibal looks at him for a moment. "Forgive me for playing devil's advocate, but if you don't like punishment, perhaps you should stay out of trouble."

            "Didn't say I don't like punishment, did I," Will says, in a tone he's sure would have gotten him a pop from the man his father once was. He shrugs heavily, and hops off the table. Walks by Hannibal and breathes in the scent of him: like leather and gin. Will tries not to shudder and grabs a mop standing against the threshold. Says over his shoulder, "I don't like _hands-off_ punishments. That's all."

 

*

 

It doesn't take long for Abigail Hobbs to see the change in Will's schedule. Will is surprised it took her as long as it has to act on it. It's been three days since he started going straight to Hannibal Lecter's house after school. He hasn't been sneaking off right after lunch which, for at least the last few months, must be a personal record. Will doesn't keep track anymore. He used to. He would document the days he skipped off or halved on some burnt-edged log in a corner of his mind. He doesn't visit that log so much lately, as the hours never seemed to add up anyway.

            On a sun-bright Wednesday, as the parking lot is filled with cars and the fervent yellow of buses, Will slogs his way through piles of nearly dead foliage, towards the chain link fence around the school. A caterpillar crawls from under a red leaf and he thinks of the leaves now falling insistently in Hannibal's yard. He's yet to do actual yardwork, he's noticed. Hannibal mostly keeps him inside, like a declawed cat.

            "Will! Hey, Will!"

            Will continues to move at his normal pace. Perhaps a bit faster.

            "Will! _Willy_ , wait up, please!"

            Will's feet halt on their own. He stands just outside the fence, on the long stretch of sidewalk beside the main road. A school bus lumbers past, yellow and heavy with the sounds of his classmates, on the way further into town. Abigail's light-footed steps echo and come to join him.

            "What?" Will asks, sighs. "What is it you want?"

            "It was so good to see you in Sunday service," she says, smiling down at him. The one inch she has now; it's taken Will all their childhood to catch up thus far. He thinks he will soon pass her, and realizes distantly that this is the closest he's been to her in years, despite their having always attended the same school, despite their houses being ten minutes apart. Her eyes have not lost their icy shimmer, nor has she grown into those huge front teeth. "I'd thought after a while you weren't coming back. Like, ever. I waved at you– did you see?"

            "Must not've," he says.

            "Are you back for good?"

            He thinks of Hannibal in those white clothes of his. The ones he wore in church, sitting nearest the window. Light dappling the brown of his hair, the piercing hazel of his eyes. Will says, "Maybe, for a bit."

            She makes an appreciative noise. Though Will has tried to take tentative steps away from her, she follows relentlessly, away from town and out towards Hannibal Lecter's and the few wide estates this way. Looking over his shoulder, Will sees the bustle of the school building and White Hill become miniscule in the distance.

            "Aren't you going home?" he asks, mutters, against his shoulder.

            "Mm. About that, I... well, I was wondering if you would want to hang out after school. I meant to catch you between classes today. I called out to you." Will remembers: between homeroom and second period, in the thicket of sophomores and juniors taller than him, he heard her ringing voice and ducked the other way.

            "Did you? Didn't hear."

            "It's okay. So, what d'you say?" She's smiling. He doesn't have to look to know. "It could, um. Be like old times."

            He doesn't have to look to know this either: she's blushing.

            _Not a chance in hell_ , he wants to say. "Can't," he says. "Busy after school." And he picks up the pace. "I've got, ah. Stuff to do."

            "Oh, right. Mr. Lecter."

            Will nearly stops again, but has picked up momentum. He turns on a heel and is effortlessly walking backwards, eyes on Abigail and narrowed at her lithe form, her brown hair blasting back from her neck on a stray wind. "How'd you know about that? Wait– everyone knows, don't they? Everyone at church?"

            "Yep," she says, chirps. "I heard you had to help him out after harassing the cemetery workers.”

            “ _Harassing_?”

            “He sure is handsome, isn't he? I haven't gotten to talk to him or anything, but everyone says he's real nice. What's his house like?"

            Half empty. Shining now with all the mopping and dusting and cleaning Will's been doing. Strewn with paintings by Hannibal's own hand: his little sister, wild landscapes of European countries Will has never seen, small animals in the underbrush; better than half the things Will has seen in gift shops and the antique store in the tiny roundabout that passes for White Hill’s downtown. He says, "Nothing special. Look, I gotta go. Maybe..." he trails off, turns on a heel, and continues off towards the estates.

            From behind, he hears her light footsteps halt. She doesn't mean to follow. She calls: "Really glad you're feeling better, Will! We all knew God wouldn’t leave you."

 

*

 

He tells Hannibal. Half because Hannibal is easy to tell. Half because having anger in his voice keeps the sadness out. Like some kind of shield – he'll use it for however long he needs to.

            "'God wouldn't leave you,'" he says again, grinding it out from somewhere deep inside him. He and Hannibal stand on the back veranda looking out into the late afternoon. The trees far behind the property are like the crushed paints Will has seen in Hannibal's small painting studio. Reds, oranges, burnt colors that look like dying embers. The air is sweet with cider. Will rearranges the heavy patio furniture with jerky staccato motions in his shoulders, his arms. "When she said that I wanted to run back and sock her. And I only didn't because she's a girl and– and she's lucky I've known her for so long. She's dopey as hell. She doesn't know the first thing about me and God, not the first fuckin thing."

            "A relationship with God is a private one," Hannibal says, voice soft from behind him.

            "I guess."

            "Still, it sounds like her heart was in the right place."

            Will bristles, minutely. He looks back, frowning. "Don't you start too. I can't get away from Bible-thumping."

            Hannibal only smiles. The wind is in his hair. He steps forward and places a strong hand on Will's shoulder, and Will feels his thighs tighten as Hannibal grips him. "My aim is not to annoy you, Will. Let me ask you: is there something you want? Something so intrinsic that would set your world spinning right again? Don't answer– just think of it. Think of it for a moment."

            Will looks up into those sun-lit eyes. He hears his own heart beating, distantly, as if it were someone else's. And he does think of it. He thinks of how things were a year ago, before the accident, and it comes to him all at once. Perfection, normalcy, died with his mother. His father might well have died then too, for all the good he is now. Inadvertently, Will leans his cheek against Hannibal's hand, rubs there briefly, which Hannibal smiles at, wider. Hannibal's thumb moves to run at Will's soft chin.

            "Now," he says, "you still believe in God, don't you, Will? Despite what you say, and the hurt you may feel, you still believe in Him."

            "Sure," Will says, soft.

            "Of course. So, think: what is it that God, in His infinite wisdom and charity, cannot provide? What is it that He can take away and not give back? Is there any such thing?"

 

*

 

He remembers how it was, in the wake of his mother's death.

            A Sunday morning. In the heat of summer; the hollies and sourwoods surrounding the White Hill Baptist Church building in lush bloom. The bright greenery so verdant that it caught Will's attention from where he sat in the pew, looking through the wide circles of glass that peered outside. Sun on his face, in his hair. Illuminating the words just above Will's thin pale fingers:

                        _"Where have you laid him?" he asked._

_"Come and see, Lord," they replied._

            In aural periphery, Will heard the pastor's dim voice talking on death and eternity. Though it had been a week since his mother's interment, the pastor continued on about it as if he was still standing over the gaping hole in the ground, watching as they lowered her in. Will remembers his eye twitching as he looked out the window, thinking, _All right, already, knock it off._ Beside him, he could already feel the emptiness filling his father's body. Slowly, over the course of the past week, he had become less and less of the fiery man Will knew – and more and more this wraith with graveyard eyes. Will didn't care much for that either. He drummed his fingers against the sleek pages of the Bible.

            At the closing prayer, Will nearly tripped over his own dress shoes getting out of the pew. He had seen Abigail and her mother’s stares over at them – Poor Things in full beam, and amplified by the rest of the attendants. Accompaniment, Will thought, looking back grimly over his shoulder. His father had barely begun to stand and already he was captured, locked in a pseudo-grieving circle of simpering women and strong shoulder-pats from the men.

            Just outside, other children Will's age and younger lingered. Waited by their parents' cars or played hacky sack near the overhang of summer-heavy trees. Will sighed out the hymns and the prayers while the voice of Garrett stung some hemisphere of his brain–

            _You shouldn't feel guilty for wondering if there was something God should have done_

            –like a sluggish bee stirred to life, just–

            _but the fact of the matter is He didn't._

            –by a sudden movement. Will leaned back against the Ram's left headlight, hands stuffed into his pockets. Heat gathered around him, sweat pooled in his underarms.

            "Will, hey! Hey!"

            Will glanced to the side. He recognized the boy from middle school; a lanky, blond boy already two inches taller than Will. Somewhere in Will's head, he'd socked away the boy's name – in a box, something like Ray or Raven, but it did not warrant rummaging. The boy came up to Will, his expression somewhere between misplaced pity and a burgeoning smile.

            The other boys stood off at the edge of the parking lot, like deer. Their heads cocked to hear, legs poised to run.

            "So, we were– well, I was– I mean, wondering if you guys heard anything about the– the driver? Or, you know. If they caught him."

            Will's eyes were half on the open church door. People finally trickling out – enough of Will's father's glum face for one day, perhaps.

            "Not that I know," Will'd said.

            "Oh. Well, what about the– you know. What'd they say about your mom?"

            "What about her?"

            Hats of blue and white – huge, sun-shading things. Will never understood why they didn't take them off inside.

            "You know," pressed Ray or Raven or Raider. "Like, was she, uh–"

            And Abigail, of course, standing so close to her father and so far from the boys you might have thought they were leering at her. But their eyes were on Will, only on Will. Will felt– warm, woefully unbusy. Like he ought to have been handling something, but there was nothing for his hands to do.

            "Kinda drunk," the boy finished, softly.

            Will saw two things at once: one, that Raider (or Ray or Raven or Randy) suddenly looked miserable for having brought it up. The boys behind him continued to look curious, perhaps eager for any further light to be shone on the situation. It wasn't every day in White Hill someone got pancaked at the biggest intersection in town. (Will had not seen the body – this they would not allow, but he heard Dr. Vedall at Marsh Regional Medical Center speak on it with his father and _pancaked_ seemed the appropriate verb.) Two, Will's father had just exited the church. From the dim hall behind him, Will could make out the sad eyes of others following the man out. Poor Things looks for the road. Will's father, in that moment, was hard to recognize. Within the past week he had seemingly lost ten pounds, and there were deep grey circles beneath his eyes. He was a wisp of himself, cold as the sheet ice that covered Marsh County River in December.

            Will jumped the boy beside him. Threw them both with such force off the concrete and back into the grass, rustling and rucking up their Sunday clothes. The boy began shrieking immediately, giving up his height and slight weight advantage, or perhaps forgetting them when confronted with Will's fists. Quickly, a circle formed around them, mostly thin legs of children, and Will continued on despite the approaching adults' cries for him to stop. Will didn't do much damage – he kept himself from Ray's eyes or ruining his teeth. Most of it was show only and had Raider stopped crying long enough to realize he wasn't actually being killed, he might not have gotten stuck the following year with the nickname Sobbin Sunovabitch. Despite this, when two adults pulled them apart, Raven was gasping for breath, eyes bulging wide, as if Will had been trying to murder him.

            When Will struggled loose and to his feet from prying hands, he looked up, off, towards his father.

            _This'll shake him out_ , Will thought, hair a jumbled mess, shirt ripped near in two. _He'll wanna tan me so good he'll forget all about grievin._

            But he didn't want to, and he didn't forget, though Will has been trying ever since.

 

*

 

As the week draws to a close, Will finds himself lingering more and more. The boxes in Hannibal's house are diminishing, and Will, for lack of anything much else to do, is the one to fold them, press them, bring them down the long driveway to the recycle bins. The rooms fill with furniture – half of it delivered, Hannibal says, and Will recognizes the rest; shapes and colors barely told from beneath sheets in the attic. There are a few boxes marked with Mischa’s name, which Hannibal does not allow Will to fiddle with. They disappear sometime between Thursday and Friday, set in a room somewhere in the house of which Will has no idea. There is room now to sit and talk, which is precisely what he does, going so far as to lure Hannibal into sitting next to him in the haze of afternoons-turning-evenings. The first floor windows standing open, October wind drifting in. The distant sounds of cars on the road.

            Hannibal seems to know by some intuition Will’s adoration for sweets. He makes snacks and drinks; when all the kitchen equipment is unpacked – chrome and shining metal, ceramic and earthenware appliances – he seems to have the entirety of the house smelling of pastry or cake by the time Will arrives from school. A tender spice cake with nutmeg and clove, topped with an obscene amount of vanilla whipped cream. Chocolate muffins laced with orange peel and drizzled on top with orange ganache icing. Peppermint bark with shards of candy cane so large Will must suck on pieces – and he does this pointedly, half-grinning at Hannibal to which Hannibal grins back and Will cannot feel much prouder of himself.

            Will sips down blackberry white tea and he thinks sometimes he must overshare. He goes on for hours, could go on longer if those Ram lights didn't appear at the top of the driveway so suddenly. He had thought his father might forget him, or come late, but he is on time, and like clockwork when Will slides into the passenger seat, he asks, "How'd it go?"

            "Okay," Will says, watching the house diminish.

            He doesn't always know where his father goes, up in his head. Whether he's with Will's mother in times gone by, or whether he's with her in some now unattainable future. The expressions on the man's face are impassable, unavailable. Even when Will has given his schoolmates black eyes, broken noses, when he has shouted the most reedy things to teachers in the midst of a quiet classroom, still his father remains cold. But he knows this much:

            His father would be sincerely livid if he could only see how Hannibal Lecter looks at him. Those little spaces where Will catches the man – over his shoulder or half-glanced. Hannibal glassing Will like he is territory to be newly discovered. And the way the man runs smooth fingertips along Will's exposed arm or even light at the back of his neck. The darkened down that tickles when touched. The hinge of his jaw.

            This would light his father. But Will isn't willing to show him this.

            Friday evening, and Will has told Hannibal his father would be late. There is a weekly meeting, he's said. Down at the church, in the basement room where usually the Sunday school class meets. There is a small group of Alcoholics Anonymous and isn't that just a laugh? There's nothing anonymous in White Hill where neighbors are in your business five minutes before you yourself are up to speed.

            "Abigail's dad is the head of the group," Will says, reclining slightly against the back of the couch in the living room. It is ten times softer than any furniture at his own house, including his bed. Hannibal sits beside him, less than a cushion over. Will's bare feet up on the coffee table. Outside, the world is dark and the windows stand half-open, blowing chilled air into the house. From here, the solar path lights are visible surrounding the back veranda. Soft orbs of light just over Hannibal's shoulder. "He used to be a boozer too but he's been sober for goin on fifteen years. Somethin like that anyway."

            "Abigail. And that's your friend who follows you here?"

            She has been getting bolder as the week's worn on. Following him longer, giving him more reluctant looks as he insists he really must go on alone. She beseeches him with requests to hang out and invites to her lunch table. Today, she nearly made it to the end of the driveway and Hannibal must have spotted her. Will shrugs it off, tugs at a lock of his hair. "We used to talk some when we was younger. Everyone in grade school called her Rabbit, to tease her about her bigass front teeth. She used to cry about it but when I called her that, she thought it was like nice. Like a pet name instead of teasin. But she's not my _friend_ , she's just some kid."

            Hannibal smiles. "Some kid," he echoes.

            "Yeah."

            "She _is_ your age, is she not?"

            " _Yeah_ ," Will drawls, frowning, then perking up suddenly. He slides another few inches across the upholstery and is nearly in Hannibal's lap. The man does not move away. "But there's a world of difference between me and her. It's a, uh, a men _tal_ ity thing."

            "Is that so?"

            Will waves a hand flippantly. Looks up into those wine-dark eyes. "Abigail's scared of her own shadow. She wouldn't do a thing if her _daddy_ told her she couldn't. But _I'm_ mature– probably _years_ ahead of my classmates." He watches Hannibal's placid, listening expression. And his words come pouring out of him, as he places one knee upon Hannibal's thigh, twisting his smaller body into a more open bearing. "Back when I was in fifth grade, there was talk of havin me test completely out of middle school. Could've skipped three grades if I wanted to, but, you know, when the test came, I gimped it because I just wasn't interested. So, really, I _should_ be almost done with high school by now." Hannibal is beginning to smile now, a knowing smile, with just a lilt of the eyebrows and it feels like indulgence, yes, that's the word, and Will knows how to push for that, so he continues: “Besides, it’s not just me. Yeah, no way, like, fr’instance, there’s this girl I used to know named Jenny Bell, and everyone knows she got broke in when she was twelve. A lot of the girls are like that around here. Abigail’s just a, you know, _outlier_. Jenny lost it out somewhere behind the middle school softball field, back when we went there. She lost it to some guy twice her age. Older’n you, I bet. _Everyone_ knew, and it’s not half so big a deal as you might think. Just how things get around here. And I even heard some of the other guys, my dad’s age, talking out behind the strip mall once, sayin that Southern kids mature faster’n Northern ones. Sayin it’s in our _blood_ , that we’re like little animals in _heat_ , so...”

            Will stops. He’s half out of breath anyway, and feels his stomach up in his trachea. He is hot, burning up, mouth dropped open again as it had in the cemetery. When he was _this_ close to Hannibal, and Hannibal gives him a brief disbelieving look before lowering his head and pressing their warm mouths together.

 

*

 

Will was eight, the first time it happened.

            The sky was cold, the branches overhead naked in the early January wind. They shook lightly, and drops of rain from an early afternoon shower swung loose. Will stood just under them, small with his dark hair shorn, eyes as green as the leaves that would arrive in three months’ time. On the field behind the elementary school building, his classmates young and wild in their recess. Red kickballs rebounding off concrete, the odd slip from the monkey bars resulting in a sudden smacking sound – followed by prolonged crying until the teachers came.

            Will stood behind a bungalow, one of the art class buildings for the fifth graders. He waited, leaned back against the building, out of sight. Long moments passed before Rabbit arrived. Dead leaves crunching under her wintertime boots.

            “Thought maybe you forgot,” Will said, rocking forward from the wall. Rabbit stood close to him, her brown hair twisting around her shoulders. She was a few inches taller.

            She shook her head no. Her pallid face red with cold and embarrassment. Will simply wanted to get it over with – he never welched on promises and he had promised Rabbit he would show her how to kiss. When she asked him the other day, he had pretended to have done it thousands of times – “A thousand _thousand_ , it’s not a big deal or nothin.” – and she in her naiveté believed him. Will liked that about her, that she was always willing to believe.

            “Let’s hurry up before someone comes,” he said and again she kept quiet. Only nodded.

            He sighed. Rose up on the toes of his broken brown shoes and, with a face of determination and slight distaste, pressed his lips forcefully to hers, mushing them together. When he pulled back, he saw his saliva on her mouth. He wiped the back of his hand against his own mouth and shoved it into his pocket.

            “Well?” he asked.

            “G-Good,” she said.

            Will nodded once. “Now you been kissed. And don’t you forget it was me who did it.”

            “I won’t,” she said, and she didn’t, and she hasn’t.

 

*

 

“Slow down. Relax,” Hannibal is saying. Murmuring, with a tint of laughter, against Will’s mouth. Will replies with some half-muffled moan, or whimper, and curls his fists further into the man’s shirt collar. Hannibal’s hand on the nape of his neck grips him, holds him back from lunging himself completely into Hannibal’s mouth. As holding the scruff of an overexcited pup. Dimly, Will supposes he ought to be embarrassed at Hannibal having to settle him, but the majority of him is too hot and heavy to care. He hitches his breathing, stills, and Hannibal kisses him again. Moves his mouth into the groove and curve of Will’s own. Slightly open. Marginally wet. Will licks out at Hannibal’s lower lip and again– Hannibal squeezes the back of his neck. Only gently. So Will allows himself to go limp, boneless, like a fish. He parts his lips and feels an insistent pulse between his legs.

            “That’s it,” Hannibal says, and suddenly his tongue is in Will’s mouth.

            This, he has never done with Abigail. There is something fresh about it, and some feeling starting in his gut that travels to his head he cannot name. Only that it seems akin to conquering: standing afar from a mountain and gazing at its frosty peaks, then standing at the summit, at the top of the world with icicle breath in your lungs. Will knew he would get want he wanted.

            Hannibal's other hand lingers on Will's lower back. The rough pads of his fingers rubbing through cotton fabric. Will gasps, arching. "Knew it," he mutters. "Knew you liked me."

            Hannibal elects not to respond. He takes Will as easily as he took the knife from the cutting board this afternoon; when he cut slices into the apple honey Bundt cake. Will is hoisted onto the man's lap, his shins resting on either side of Hannibal's thighs and he groans, shivers, when Hannibal lightly jolts him. His mouth tastes distantly of the bourbon he sipped earlier. Barely, such that Will can glean only hints of sweetness. He can feel his whole body lighting up, nerves that seem to have only ever come alive when he was touching himself in bed, or when he was bent over his father's knee. Unable to move his head for Hannibal's strong grip there, Will spreads his legs wider, lowering and hesitantly grinding himself against the hard friction Hannibal's belt buckle supplies. Hannibal seems to allow this.

            And then he doesn't. Will feels a flip of excitement and disappointment muddling together in his stomach when Hannibal manhandles him onto his back, against the downy give of the couch cushions. Will's head is pillowed by a folded throw blanket over the armrest, and Hannibal lingers above him. The space between them is minimal but Will thinks it a chasm. He looks into the man's eyes and they are so clear, so still, that he can see himself. Himself: red-mouthed, hazy-eyed, hair in a tangle. Hands palms-up above his head, chest rising and falling catastrophically. Their saliva mixing on his lips.

            "Keep going," Will says.

            "We shouldn't be doing this."

            Will whimpers. He can't help it. Shakes his head. "It's okay, I swear, it's fi–"

            Hannibal shushes him, and Will hears it: the rumble of those familiar Ram tires on the driveway. The purr of the engine as it lurches to a halt and, dimly, he can see the headlights bouncing off the other wall in the living room. Will cranes his neck and just through the top of the window, he can see that fervent red color. Before he can move, Hannibal suddenly leans down, pressing the front planes of their bodies together. Will heaves a breath and feels himself _twitch_. Into his ear, so soft, Hannibal says, "Can I trust you, Will? Can I trust you not to say anything?"

            "Mm," Will hums, nodding, grinding up once more in helpless abandon. "Yeah, fuck, you can trust–"

            Hannibal takes a hand and slams Will's hips back into the cushion. Will makes a frustrated noise that is drowned out by his father's knocking on the door. Three loud raps. Hannibal looks at him again with composure undisturbed. Without a word, he rises from the couch easily. Rounds the armrest, leaves the visible room to the front door where he answers, and Will can hear him say, "Mr. Graham, hello. So good to see you. I'm sure Will is looking forward to going home."

 

*

 

Will has it to think about over the weekend. He is in a half-stupor such that when his father asked him on the drive home if he thought he'd finally learned his lesson, he could only hum in a vaguely musical tone. He kept his legs crossed in the passenger seat, and at their arrival home, nearly tripped over living room furniture to get into the shower. He stood sopping wet with his forearm braced against the tiled wall, head down. Free hand worked tirelessly, lubed with overmuch strawberry-scented conditioner between his legs. The water lashed against his bony shoulders, the thin white column of his neck. Hannibal's hand had gripped there.

            Will came in seconds, with such force that he nearly lost balance. He did, for a second. The Dove soap bar flopped from the side of the tub, and he went fishing for it half blind. Water beat into his open eyes and he spent the rest of the shower wiping the wall free of his semen. He watched it swirl down the drain, like his blood in Hannibal’s kitchen.

            In the night, he is dreaming. Or he thinks he is. In the dream, he stands at the edge of the wide field behind the Lecter estate. That autumn speckled tree line he has yet to visit. And he looks out at the house from here: the stateliness of it, the solitude of being on the edge of White Hill. Overhead, the sky is a guileless blue. He thinks of going into the house and seeing what pastry Hannibal will give him, what the man will put in his mouth with an overwhelming tenderness, and suddenly he is not alone. Hannibal is beside him, standing pristine in his finely pressed dress pants, his shirt.

            Will looks up at him. Their hair blowing in the winds. "Mr. Lecter, can you tell me–" he begins and does not recognize his own voice. It sounds frightfully young. He cannot remember the rest of the question, and so he repeats himself: "Can you tell me? Can you tell me?"

            Hannibal looks down at him. "Why, Will, don't you know?" His voice is of the pastor's.

            "I thought I knew once. But I forget."

            "Will, can you tell me why Jesus raised Lazarus? How he was able to do it?"

            "Nosir."

            Will doesn't know why he's said that. He knows, from a remove which is half dream and half himself watching the dream, that he knows how Jesus did it. Jesus is God's son, and he did it because he can.

            "No," Hannibal says. His pupils seem to define blackness and they grow until the color of hazel that surrounded them turns to one thin ring and this ring is blue, like the sky, or like Will's mother's eyes. "It was trust and belief, Will. What Jesus needed was the faith of Lazarus' sisters. Unyielding. Unfaltering. And their sorrow. Yes, he needed that as well. That's why–"

            Will begins convulsing.

            Will begins _convulsing_. He sits up, soaked in his own sweat and rigid in his pajama pants. It is Saturday morning and he strokes himself finished in the bedsheets.

            The day drags long and he isn't sure he wants to go outside. Weekends, usually, he spends at the cemetery, or off along the dead end not far from his house. Those two quiet places where he can think, and he doesn't have to entertain his father's ghostliness or his mother's ghost. It's there, in the house. She is. And he looks at her, or, Will thinks idly, her dress. In the spare bedroom which has yet to be actively cleaned out or rearranged: she used that as a sewing room, when she was alive and lively. A side business which was no business at all. Will remembers her taking long weeks to measure other women on the block, to hear their ideas on patterns and fabrics and rose print, tulip print, gardenias in full bloom. She didn't charge a dime. And she wore some of them.

            This one, in particular:

            Through the slanted beams of dusklight coming through the open window, Will watches from the doorway as his father stands in the sewing room. He stands in the bars of light, unaffected by Will's watching. If he knows Will is there, he doesn't show it. The dress – a frail pink slip of fabric – is worn by a faceless manikin. A sleeveless thing which trails the floor. The hem is ruffled and dust-covered, and as the sun filters into the room and out, the pink turns dark and darker. Finally, Will's father takes a hand to touch the dress; the high ride of the manikin's bosom and the soft fringe there.

            The dreams keep coming, and Saturday night is an onslaught. He thinks it – later, when he is awake and sweating and keening – a result of the bad pizza his father brought home for dinner from the place up on Gorge Avenue. Perhaps it made him sick. He is besieged by feverdreams wherein he is six feet under in an open coffin, and he looks down at his body which is not a body at all but a bleached bone skeleton. When he looks up, out of the grave, he sees Hannibal peering in.

            His lips are swollen and red, as they were after kissing.

            "What do I need?" Will asks, the bones of his face clattering as he speaks. Again, he cannot recognize his voice.

            But Hannibal sounds like himself. He raises a hand. Takes two fingers, first and middle, and presses them between his own lips, deep into his mouth up to the last knuckle. Slowly withdraws them. The saliva gleams in sunlight. "A virgin," he says.

            When Will wakes this time, he has already come.

            On Sunday morning, Will sits in a pew beside his father. The church hums with prayer and jostling and the women’s eyes are, once more, settled on Hannibal Lecter who sits across the way with Bible in hand. Will watches him from beneath his curls and holds his Bible steadfastly over the lap of his pants. His chest is tight, his fingers sweat into the pages. He has been stroking himself all weekend to the man's likeness and remembering with increasing obscurity their fleeting moments on his couch. His hand at the small of Will's back. How he flipped him down into the cushions and forbade him any movement.

            _Asshole_ , Will thinks.

            _I want you_ , he thinks, like trying to incite some kind of sonar, throwing these words invisibly across the room and into the man's head. Hannibal does not seem to notice.

           

*

 

He can't get close to the man, and it would perhaps be better if he didn't try.

            _"Can I trust you, Will? Can I trust you not to say anything?"_

            Of course. Will knows better than to draw attention to it. Will knows better than to look too eager around others, for Will is known around town for nothing if not, one, his affinity for breaking noses and, two, his idyllic aloofness. The women, the pastor, the pastor's wife, and even the men may crowd around Hannibal Lecter after service, but Will may not.

            It's quite possible that Hannibal thinks Will was lying about Jenny Bell, but he wasn't. He used her to coax Hannibal into it, yes, but she is real. Will spoke to her not long after her cherry popped and he asked her, in that aloof way of his, "So who was it?"

            She was yellow-haired and stood in a dirty sundress. Looked at him through the thin stretch of her bubblegum. It popped in between them, big as a balloon. "What d'you care?"

            "Billy Staff," Will guessed. They stood behind the art building of the middle school, whiling away a late spring recess. From the other side of the building, the fervent smack of a soccer ball against a shin. When Jenny declined to answer, he continued: "Aaron Spellinger. Gregory Mace. Owen McMann. Tyler Wel–"

            "Why you guessin old guys?"

            "Cause that's who did it."

            She grinned, still smacking the gum. Her lips coated in sugar.

            "What's it like?" Will asked.

            "Like–" She looked up, briefly, eyes drifting. As if something floated between them, unseen. "Like bein gored through. Like bleedin out."

            Not long after, it became common knowledge that Jenny would sneak off into Daniel Warner's blue Highlander – _Daniel Warner_ , he thought, _damn, I'da gotten it if she let me keep guessin_ – and he was more or less railroaded out of town. Will supposes he did lie to Hannibal after all – about it not being a very big deal. Daniel was thirty at the time, when Jenny started walking funny. Will remembers someone throwing rocks from Ms. Oleander's garden in through Daniel's living room windows. The noise it made in the night set car alarms off. A week later, someone else set his mailbox afire. Jenny’s parents took her out of school and called the cops. Not long after, Daniel was gone.

            Southern kids mature faster; Will thinks it might be true.

            Parents don’t like it much.

 

*

 

It's cold enough for a jacket, now. Though Will forgot his at home. On Monday afternoon he stalks down the street, furthering himself from the school and town. Ahead of him, the vista of road bracketed by green farmland beneath a low-hanging sky. The clouds daylong have been a scrubby grey.

            Up the long driveway to Hannibal Lecter's house, Will fiddles with the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt. Grips and fists them, pushes his thumbnails against the worn-through patches where he does such whenever he is unnerved. His backpack bounces lightly against his lower back. So loud, he thinks. Or else the rest of the world is simply silent.

            The doorbell is loud too. As is his knocking a moment later. The door opens, Hannibal looking down at him with eyes as overcast as the sky.

            "Will," he says. "I did not expect you."

            "Liar," Will says, grinning helplessly.

            "I'm surprised you could tell." He stands back from the door, making way for Will. Will treads in, dropping his backpack with a careless thud on the hardwood. The house looks like a real house now, Will notices. Like something out of _Better Homes & Gardens_. His mother was always flipping through that. Hannibal shuts the door, standing back against it when Will turns to face him. "Does your father know you're here?"

            Will's grin grows lopsided. "I'm not a _kid_. I don't need _permission_." Another step forward, and he reaches a tentative hand out to flick Hannibal's belt buckle. "I kept dreamin about you, you know." _God dressed up like you_ , he thinks but does not say.

            "Is that so."

            "Uh huh." And Hannibal isn't moving – isn't saying yes or no, so it's quite possible this is okay. Will takes the belt buckle fully in hand and before he's quite aware, Hannibal has him by the wrist in a tight grip. Will looks up at him.

 

*

 

This takes on the veneer of one of his weekend feverdreams, though he knows it cannot possibly be one. Hannibal has dragged him into the kitchen, pinned him up against a counter. The sharp edge of granite pinching into his low back. Hannibal's scent enveloping him; Hannibal's mouth over his; Hannibal's hands in Will's hair, gripping, exposing his mouth, his throat and everything he is to thievery. In the roar and heat pumping through Will's body, the blood in his ears, he hears something. Something that perhaps cannot be heard at all but felt, he feels it, that's truer, he feels words lacing into him. There is a silken sensation. There is a wetness. There is something he heard in a dream, from a grave, from the bones that made him up.

 

*

 

Tuesdays in the cafeteria boast chicken sandwiches though Will has always had his doubts. When he used to eat lunch at school, he would taste these and think, _This’s definitely beef._

            He hasn't had lunch at school in months. They make it too easy to simply leave the building and walk a few blocks to the Exxon at the corner of James Campbell and Main. Hostess cupcakes and Pepsi in hand, he would either trek to the cemetery and eat with his mother, or return in time for fifth period. This erased two things: the noise and chaos of the lunchroom and any seat-related politics that he himself is above.

            In the florescent gleam of the wide room, Will holds his tray, standing offside of the coagulating line behind him. He looks out at the raging sea of students. Abigail sticks out easily. Will doesn't know if it is because he has known her nearly all her life or if it is her newfound purpose in his life. She shines gracefully; brown hair meticulously brushed, blue eyes glinting at her tablemates. She sits with others like her – children of pious adults who sit in church as if they are happy to be there, as if they weren't dragged from bed and stuffed into patent leather shoes.

            Their expressions when Will drops his tray on the Formica table, and follows suit by sitting between them, are delightful.

            Abigail alone looks happy to see Will. "Wow, you're really here!"

            Will smiles softly. "Yeah, I'm really here."

           

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, kids. They think they know things, but... well. Comments appreciated.


	3. Yearning

Will at midnight, in the lush dark of the cemetery. He looked, briefly, for Hannibal upon arrival as one might look for specters around every tree or mausoleum – the feeling of being followed touched his skin, but he could never justify it. The grave stands before him, the willow tree behind. He knows he's been absent for an unusual amount of time and he explains to the grave marker, to the stone and plate.

            This afternoon, Will finally managed to coax Abigail Hobbs from the lunchroom. It has taken him three days to accomplish it; each more taxing than the last. Will is not used to so much interaction with children his own age. Once not long ago he wondered if he were lonely and if friends in his grade would correct that for him – he thinks not, now. Those youthful faces around the rectangular lunch table, with Abigail sitting high at the end like any princess holding court. Will sat nearest her much to many of the other boys' chagrin. Avery Thurmson, for instance, who often looks at Abigail as if she is purity incarnate and who often looks at Will as if he is used toilet paper someone is threatening to rub on Her Holiness.

            Throughout the three days spent having lunch at Abigail's table, Will has tested his ability to maintain a smile in the face of vast discomfort. It isn't strong, and he doesn't plan on using it often. He could feel himself grimacing when Abigail's friends, prodded by her encouraging expressions, asked him his opinions on the school's sports teams, if he knows who is currently dating who – the girls blushing dutifully at this, Will resisting the urge to groan – and even the new rich man in town, Hannibal Lecter.

            Will perked at this.

            Said Gregory, "He's got that funny accent and all. It's kinda weird, him being Baptist. Them foreign types, they're usually Catholic."

            Abigail shook her head. "Daddy asked him about it. He said denominations weren't a concern. He said, 'I go where God goes.'"

            "That's a kick."

            "I think it's sweet," Melissa hummed, smiling at Abigail who smiled back.

            "Speaking of," Abigail said, placing a light-weighted hand on Will's shoulder. "Will's got to talk to him some. You were helping him settle last week, right, Will?"

            "Oh, what's he like?" Melissa asked.

            Suddenly all eyes were peering at him, like a fish in a bowl. The girls for having seen Hannibal in passing at church; the boys out of sullen curiosity at who they may have considered to be a rival. Will's urge to roll his eyes was never stronger. He shrugged largely and said, "Actually, me and him _still_ hang out. I go there after school. He's pretty cool. We do all kinds of adult things."

            He heard Avery muttering, "What's _that_ mean?" and did not deign to answer. The others looked suitably awed and Abigail looked at Will with just a touch of reverence that lingered at the edge of a warm expression. Will felt something in himself say, _That's it._ And he knew she would come to him when he beckoned her, right as the lunchroom was emptying – students, classmates, her friends leaving and waving over at her with confused tilts of the head as she absconded with Will out the back door. Out through the courtyard and past the open breezeway which connects two of the school buildings.

            There is a place that exists: if one goes down the handicap ramp which merges seamlessly into the parking lot. Where the teachers often take up unmarked spots, where the two Dumpsters rise unceremoniously blue and black and buzzing with flies. Farther out. Where the grass turns wild. The tree line, sparse with the cold now. Farther out. Where the grass thins in a circle hidden long from view, where there is an old green picnic table dragged from the courtyard. Forgotten and marked up with all manner of graffiti. On the ground worn away by the trample of boots and sneakers, there is litter: cigarette butts the most common, and soda cans, gum wrappers, a few used and torn condoms and at this Abigail turned her fine-pointed nose up, wrinkling it. In her disgust, Will noticed, she was quite pretty.

            Sun filtered through the tops of firs and speckled her pale face. "Will, what're we doing here? This's really nasty."

            "What d'you mean what're we doing here?" He hopped back onto the picnic tabletop, legs swinging over the side. "You been askin me to hang out, so that's what we're doing."

            "Th... that's not what I meant! I meant, you know, after school, or–"

            "Nope."

            "But why not?"

            "Because I'm busy. I got responsibilities."

            She stood with her hands wringing in each other, as if being near this place somehow sullied her. Somewhere overhead, one bird called to another. Rustling filled the silence, for a time. Then Abigail rocked forth on her toes. "But you only had to help Mr. Lecter for a week," she said quietly. "Right? That's how long your dad–"

            "How'd you know tha–" He stopped himself. He could only imagine their fathers talking. "Fuck it, never mind."

            Her eyes rounded.

            "Ugh. Jesus, Abigail."

            "Will, why do you still go over there? Are you two really friends? He’s so much older…"

            "No, he _isn’t_. It’s only like… ten years or somethin. And I’m totally mature for my age, or don’t you know that yet?”

            She murmured, “Um.”

            Will groaned. “Don't you ever want to do something your dad doesn't know about? Something that's just yours?"

            "I..." Furrowed her brow. "Like what?"

            Will had been digging a pinky deep in his ear. He winced and rubbed the wax-covered finger along his blue jeans. Hopped off the tabletop and pulled Abigail by one thin arm close to him. He did what he had done before, when he was but eight. Raised up on his toes and kissed her and she gasped, she struggled to get away. This, of course, Will understood to be show. She had to have made an attempt, as weak-willed as it was. Things are not the same as when they were little. Abigail has learned shame and demureness. Will has learned aggression. They are fully aware of their places and enacted them in the sun-strewn patch of grass a hundred yards back from the school.

            Will pulled away from her and studied the hazy look upon her face. One blue eye opened wider than the other, her lips full and pink, parted. Those teeth.

            "We could be like we used to be," Will said, allowing the fingers of his hand to linger against her elbow. "Do stuff together. Might be fun, right?"

            "Right..."

            The word uttered so soft it might have been imagined. But Will grinned at her, and he ushered her back to the school building. They went their separate ways in a desolate hall; no longer under the flattering light-through-trees but florescence, and he watched her form retreating. He knew that she would be late to her social studies course and he knew she would not be able to stop thinking about him, his hand holding her arm, his lips on hers.

            He tells this to the grave, to his mother, who he has not spoken to for some time. And the wind shutters against the willow branches overhead, and the grasses blow against his sneakers. He tells her he can fix everything this way. He is not assured of all the details yet, he whispers in the low breath of what is now November. But God comes to him in his dreams, and He tells him more and more every night.

 

*

 

“So... s-so, what's the point in this anyway?”

            “Will, you need to hold still.”

            “I _am_ holding still!”

            “You look precarious.”

            “Precarious?”

            “You are wavering. Sit with your legs parted. Lean back on one hand.”

            “ _Wa_ ver– Jesus! It's windy, it's cold. I'm gonna catch my death out here,” he says and all of a sudden stops. He looks up, across the few feet of space on the wooden veranda that separates he and Hannibal. Will sits on the banister, balancing with his back to the long yard out behind and the tree line beyond that.

            The afternoon is deceitful; warm when the wind is sleeping and brisk when it wakes, made even worse by the fact that Will is dressed not as he came. When he walked to the house after school, he was in jeans, a red long-sleeve shirt with a rip at the left shoulder from a fight three months back. He is clad now in an off-white dress. Hannibal called it ivory. So long its hem flutters at Will's toes, and sleeveless. The material so sheer Will feels almost naked. It is at once thrilling and humiliating, and Will has little idea of _how_ he was talked into putting it on. Only that Hannibal suggested it with such nonchalance that Will thought this must be a test; he will show Hannibal he is up for anything, as much as any adult. He can roll with it.

            Hannibal sits behind a wooden H-frame easel and stretched canvas. He wears cool greys and whites. He looks somewhere between amused and bothered at Will's fidgeting and it is now that Will recalls his mother used to say that all the time: _You'll catch your death out there._

            But Hannibal does not make issue of it. He instead stands, crosses the small distance between them with purposeful footsteps.

            “Mr. Lecter, if we're gonna–”

            The planks of the veranda sound loud under the man's shoes. Or perhaps it is the silence of the day. He comes to stand before Will, close to Will, and with the utmost care he lifts the hem of the dress along Will's thin, white legs. Will watches this with muted shock. He cannot decide where to look: whether it be at his legs fully revealed and the stiffness between them now immediate or Hannibal's off-cast expression at the rolling hills beyond the house. As if he is doing nothing of importance.

            And his hand.

            Will takes in a stilted breath as the warmth of Hannibal's open palm encircles him. Ever so lightly. Will's face works against itself, pulled between disbelief and pleasure. He shifts up into the light-handed grasp, or tries, before Hannibal uses his other hand to still Will. Holding him gentle at the small of his back.

            "Keep still, please," he says.

            Will murmurs curses, the pitch of his voice higher as Hannibal's hand moves. The wind blows through his hair, like a caress, and Will gives a hiccup of a moan. Leans his head forward the smallest bit, in increments, wary of chastising, until his forehead connects with the man's broad chest. Hannibal says nothing. Will shuts his eyes, grits his teeth. The slow slide of that open hand upon him. His hands clawed on the banister.

            He has a distinct feeling that if he should move, Hannibal will stop. For his own sake, he keeps eerily still, and says through gritted teeth: “M-Mr. Lecter.”

            “Yes, Will.”

            “Mr. Lecter, if… if you’re gonna… gonna do this, then–” He breaks off with a startled shudder – a car blaring out near the road. He opens his eyes, confronted only with the dull white of Hannibal’s finely pressed shirt. Turns his face upward, to take in the sunny sky, to offer his mouth up. “Then, can’t you… just…”

            “Just what? Tell me what it is you want.”

            “I.”

            Hannibal’s expression: as it is at service. Will has seen it, has burned it into his mind. When Pastor Garrett is talking of sin and redemption, when he is filling the church with hymns, Hannibal looks at the pulpit in just this way. With an ease, and an expectation. With something nearing indifference. Hannibal favors him with that expression for a small second – a tiny eternity – and leans down. Will allows his mouth to fall open out of instinct, yet Hannibal passes it by. The right strap of the dress has fallen over Will’s shoulder. His chest is peppered in gooseflesh, his pert nipple taken deftly into Hannibal’s warm mouth. Hannibal closes his hand, finally, blessedly. Will jolts and is spilling readily into Hannibal’s fist, in spurts, with a twisting of his small square toes. In a rare and quiet moment of lucidity which runs parallel to the ecstasy, Will thinks he might fall back off the banister. But no, Hannibal has him well in hand.

            Will is flushed red. The wind seems to kick higher, to blow his curls about his pinkened ears and Hannibal takes his mouth from Will’s chest. He releases all of Will and, hazily, Will sees his semen dripping down the man’s hand.

            “I,” he sighs, “I-I think I got it on… on your sister’s dress. Um.” His arms shake as he holds onto the banister.

            Hannibal looks down at the dark patches formed on the dress. Nods slightly. “Yes,” he says. “Fortunately, there are such things are dry-cleaning. And she has many more dresses.”

            “That’s, uh, that’s good.”

            Hannibal turns back for the easel. He sits, and looks steadily at Will: cheeks flushed, the strap of the dress unhinged still to reveal a wet nipple, his wet mouth, his parted legs. Hannibal says, “Now, Will, don’t move from that spot. You look lovely.” He tends to the brushes and paints and so _idly_ does he suck the cooling semen from the webbing of his fingers.

 

*

 

Will wishes he could say he is adept, now, at telling apart his father’s new emotions – or what could pass for emotions in lieu of actual ones. The little lilt of the right side of his mouth. The crinkle of his eyes. The tenor of his sigh at the end of the day. The yawn before coffee in the morning. They are, at once, so alike and so different. Will hopes he will remedy their situation before he can become so adept.

            But he thinks he can see it:

            For the past week, Will has been racing against time. When the last school bell rings and the parking lot and yard floods with footsteps as fleeting as his own, he makes a mad dash for the gate and the world beyond the school perimeter. Somewhere, in the air like a vibration, he can feel Abigail. Her eyes searching the crowd for him, her heart searching the wavelengths. She must know how to find him – she knows where he goes. When the school buses haul from the parking lot in one direction, Will tramps down the other. She does not follow.

            By secrecy, Will is torn from Hannibal’s home no later than 6 PM. He feels something akin to deep regret each time he walks to the front door. Searches the insides of his own mouth by way of tongue on the walk home, to taste Hannibal hiding there – the bourbon he drinks, the scant traces of herb and spice. Will’s thin fingertips tremble at his sides. He replays all of it: his hands on the broad span of Hannibal’s shoulders, the man’s strong jaw in his grasp, the desperation in Will’s hips as he moved against Hannibal’s thigh, hand, arm, anything he could get close enough to before Hannibal gave him that familiar jolt into stillness.

            And before Will knows it, he is home again.

            He looks up at the smallness of his house, the infinitesimal drear compared to the estate where he spends his early evenings. There is a disconnect here, so intense and uncomfortable that the only thing that comes to mind before entering the desolate, cool darkness is _Home again home again jiggity jig_ – some far-off sound like a satellite’s beeping in space. His mother used to say that every time they pulled into the driveway. Back then, this place seemed the world; the yard well-trimmed for his father’s know-how in landscaping, the gardenia-filled garden off the side of the house, the lone sugarberry tree where cicada husks lingered in the seven-year season. Bright, blooming. The melody of his childhood, the scents of dinner from the kitchen window. The smooth leather of the belt when he mouthed off. Grace. Goodnight kissing. When Will looks at it now, he sees decay.

            He makes it home with scarcely a half-hour to spare before the Ram pulls up into the drive, the headlights bringing sun into the house. And Will searches his father’s face upon his entry: sagging from the day, filthy, deep circles beneath his eyes. But his mouth lilts, to see Will. To know that Will has been in school all day and there are no messages beeping red on the answering machine, longing to tattle that Will has been a disappointment today.

            At his side, he holds up a heaving bag of fast food.

            “Hungry?” he asks.

            Will nods.

 

*

 

Hunger does not enter into it. He eats because suspicion would linger over them if he did not. Dinner is held at the dining table, a pale shadow of yesteryear. Burgers and fries on paper plates. Lukewarm; the drive from Gorge Avenue to their dingy suburb is peppered with red lights that clot rush-hour. Ill yellow lighting from the ceiling casting long shadows of their forearms, elbows on the table, their mouths working in the silence of the room. Far away, there is a child’s shout – someone still left playing in the dark, on the street.

            His father sucks ketchup from the pad of his thumb. Will sees only Hannibal sucking semen from his fingertips.

            Between bites, Will offers: “We had a quiz the other day in chemistry. Got a nine out of ten.” He says it with the cadence of: _Hang in there, Dad. I’m going to save you._

            His father looks at him again. “That’s great, Will. I’m so glad you’re trying.”

 

*

 

It is unpermitted to linger in the second story.

            Will thinks it so, anyway. It is in the subtle way Hannibal herds him: from the attic level, where there are many paintings, painting supplies, dust motes in the filtered sunlight. To the bottom floor where they spend much of their time in the kitchen or living room, where the fireplace now roars to life for the autumn chill settling in White Hill. There has been another painting session with Will in Mischa’s dress and he has just redressed himself in normal clothing in the attic. As Will descends the stairs past the second story, he looks around briefly. The long hall laid with maroon runner carpeting, the same hardwood floor bracketing it that lines the rest of the house. The cold walls. At the end of the hall, to the left, an open door.

            If Will’s gaze lingers too long, Hannibal nips him. Behind an ear, or at the nape of his neck. Something that sends a singular trickle of pleasure down Will’s spine which is not unlike river water on a June day.

            But today Hannibal is downstairs, waiting. Will stands on the staircase in a limbo between the summit and depths of the house, one leg poised gently in half-step. Hand on the cool banister, he looks off to the left to that door that stands open. The dress he has been wearing for the painting is upstairs, neatly folded in a beam of attic sunlight. Hannibal has said the painting is nearly finished, yet he will not allow eyes on it prematurely.

            Will steps from the staircase. His footsteps are silent, though he does not deign to tiptoe. He isn’t sure what he imagined in this room, and it surely was not simply the master bedroom. Innocent in the 5 PM dusk through the windows, the sheer curtains, lighting the room in a gentle orange. The bed is enormous, hemmed at the top by a walnut headboard. The bed itself is cloudlike, and when Will crosses the flooring to sit on it, he sinks in. He is unaware of the audible sigh he makes. Everything in Hannibal’s house is lush, is wonderful, is luxuriating. He isn’t sure how any of this is real, or how he has been lucky enough to be gift-dropped onto the man’s doorstep. It must be indeed a divine act.

            “Will.”

            Will jolts, and realizes that he had been reclining onto the wealth of feather-stuffed pillows at the head of the bed, positioned like making snow angels. His bare feet rubbing into the comforter. Hannibal stands lightly in the threshold, pressed and elegant. Across the room, like Hannibal’s small feminine twin, hangs a portrait of Mischa over the dresser. Beneath her likeness is a red lacquered box nearly a foot in length, sitting between unlit candles. It gleams in the dusklight.

            “Sorry, I wasn’t, uh–” Will half-grins, but does not move from the spot. He re-settles. “I wasn’t gonna touch anything but your bed is just really nice.”

            “It is.”

            “How come you never let me come in here?”

            “What reason would you have to come in here? There is nothing to entertain you. I keep it relatively barren.”    

            Will’s grin enlivens, and he stretches his hands up under the pillows, under his head. The silken feel of them runs chills down his body. “I can think of something entertaining,” he says with a lilt of mischief. Hannibal continues to favor him with that placid gaze and Will takes this to mean continue. “C’mon, you _know_ you want to. Why haven’t we already? You can barely keep your hands off me.”

            “It would be inappropriate, Will.”

            “Inap _pro_ –”

            “Highly inappropriate,” he says, and takes one smooth hand to the doorjamb. Touches the wood there, allowing his gaze to fall from Will’s form on the bed. “I suppose I sound quite like a hypocrite to you.”

            “Fuck yeah you do. We’ve been–”

            “Still. While what we have done may not be smiled upon, sex would be something entirely different. Specifically, with a virgin.”

            Will sighs. Allows his head to sink completely into the pillows, eyes shut. “But that’s just _it_. I _want_ it, I know it’s different but that’s– I don’t wanna be treated like a kid. I wanna…” He searches for the word with his tongue tapping gently over his teeth. Tents his eyebrows. “I wanna do adult things.”

            It is quiet. As if through layers, there is the muted sound of the wind against the house. And Will’s jeans and the fabric of his shirt against the silken comforter. His soft breathing.

            Hannibal says, “Have you given thought to how it might hurt?”

            “Think about it all the time,” Will mumbles, and it is true enough. What Jenny Bell said to him that day during recess still rings like a church bell in his head: _Gored_. He opens his eyes to find Hannibal unmoved from the threshold. “Pain don’t bother me. If that’s what you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve been beat up, fell out of trees, smacked with a belt so hard I couldn’t see straight. I seen my mom lowered into the ground with a closed coffin cause apparently she looked so broken up, they couldn’t fix her right. I been through all kinds of pain and I don’t cry. Not a tear.” Will’s hand lingers under the pillows, up near the corner of the bed. He moves his fingers against something cool and smooth. Something metal. He pulls himself to a half-sit, leaning on his side. He looks at Hannibal, who only watches as if Will is some mildly interesting television show. Will pulls back the pillows and finds a hand restraint. It is black leather with a shimmering silver buckle, attached to the bedpost by one end and free on the other. Will stares at it for an undetermined length of time, his eyes widened, mouth open and dry. Tentatively, he moves to the other side of the wide bed and lifts the pillows there. The handcuff’s twin resides on this side.

            He turns back and looks at Hannibal. “Fuck,” he says, all he can say.

            Hannibal smiles, just briefly.

            “Can you– I mean, do you…” Will licks his lips. “Do you use them? I mean, have you lately?”

            Hannibal says nothing.

            “Would… _would_ you use them? On me?”

            “Is that what you want?”

            “Yeah. I want it.”

            Hannibal scans him. From the top of his curls to his bare feet as he sits on the bed. Will’s heart is in his throat, and he is rigid in his jeans, aching. Hannibal smiles at him, calm. He waves a hand and as he leaves the room, says, “Come now, Will. It’s nearly time for you to go home.”

 

*

 

Weekends confuse him. Leave him in what his mother might have called a _state_. Though Will is sure he could make it to Hannibal Lecter’s house in some capacity on Saturday, under guise of going out to get fresh air, he feels something from his father that might be approaching suspicion. It is nothing in his movements around the house or his demeanor. Will feels it like radio waves, a static in the air.

            Too, there are the dreams, which have grown in intensity. They are halfway between nightmares and wet dreams, as when Will wakes he is choked with screams and leaking into his pajama pants. He is often coated in sweat and has taken to sleeping with the window open. God speaks to him in these dreams – he has come to the solemn realization that, yes, God has returned to him with all the fanfare and salvation of a prince upon a white horse – and He says such sickeningly sweet things to Will that he might burst at waking.

            He tells Will how to handle his time with Abigail. How to gently, intuitively unravel her innocence until she begins to rip it off herself. Will has been doing as instructed, meeting with her during school hours. Stolen time, from the lunchroom and soft minutes between classes in that spot in the woods. At first, she stepped into that condom-and-cigarette littered place like a princess stepping onto mud with no barrier between her crystal shoes and the filth. Now she runs into it readily, with her hair about her shoulders, her friends like deacons left behind at the lunch table. She kisses Will with fervent inexperience, and Will tamps down any disgust he might feel. He has tried to imagine Hannibal in her place but that, he learned quickly, was nothing but folly. They are too different.

            Instead, Will strives to take on Hannibal’s role. He kisses her at once with tenderness and force. He kisses her like he’s teaching her, and Abigail has always been a model student, even when they were small. Her father demanded nothing less.

            To further lull her into a sense of security, Will has retaken to using her childhood nickname. Under the whirling sunbeams that skirt the boughs, that find them in the basin, he has told her, “Rabbit, hold still,” and immediately she shudders, she melts, and Will would find it hilarious if he didn’t find it necessary.

            God has not told him how using Abigail will help him get his mother back. And when Will is dreaming, whether standing on a snowcapped mountaintop or awash in desert sands, he feels the hot slick of God’s words in his ear, out of order, out of space and time, and he knows, fully, inescapably, that when the right moment approaches he will know exactly what to do. 

            _Like magic_ , Will thinks, sitting in a half-stupor during service. The wide room is sun-filled and streaming, and the congregation is silent but for the odd affirmation at Pastor Garret’s teachings. The smooth shuffle of children’s shoes against the carpet. The soft revolutions of the three fans overhead.

            When the service comes to an end, Will does not hold any illusions of being able to speak to Hannibal. As has become custom of the women in the congregation, they swarm him, no longer bearing the innocent cover of greeting the new man in town. Though Hannibal has resided in White Hill for nearing a month – more than enough time for someone to lose any allure to many residents – it seems to Will that Hannibal’s draw is as forceful as ever. As the tide obeys the moon, the women are captive to his glow. They are not the only ones.

            “Will. How are you, darling?”

            Will blinks and looks up, startled to see himself surrounded. The pastor’s wife, Abigail, and the pastor himself have gravitated to Will and his father who stand not far from their once occupied pew. His father and the pastor speak, and his father regards the man with a light in his eyes Will never sees anymore.

            “Fine,” he says to Abigail’s mother. She smiles at him and touches his hair, like she used to when they were small. Abigail stands nearby, beaming and starry-eyed, and Will pointedly looks away from her.

            “We were thinking about having you two over for dinner,” she continues, finagling another curl from Will’s eyes. Her voice lowers. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Getting everyone together again,” and she stumbles here, where she and Abigail share a glance and Will can feel them thinking of his mother six feet under, “well, you know, us, and we could catch up.”

            “I think it’s a great idea,” says the pastor, who has now turned with Will’s father into the conversation. He is all blue eyes and teeth. “We’ve been talking about you so much, Will.”

            “You have?” he asks, glancing at Abigail.

            “Truly! We all just think it’s great you’ve returned to church, and of your own volition.” The man looks to Will’s father, nods.   

            Will’s father nods in synchrony. “I didn’t push him. I knew he’d come in time.”

            Will forces himself to smile, and does not realize how jagged, how fractured, it is. “I guess God never left me after all,” he says, and they return his smile with such favor that Will could almost think himself surrounded by family.

 

*

 

On Monday night, Will sits in Hannibal Lecter’s dining room. The windows around the house are shut; the sun outside has dipped below the red-dappled foliage and the sky has merged purple and indigo; the lights are turned down low.

            As bid, Will has closed his eyes. Before shutting them, the dark alder veneer of the tabletop was barren, save for Will’s small glass of water beside him and, diagonal, Hannibal’s half-drained glass of bourbon. The honey-color in the soft light glinted and Will felt the smallest bit tired. And thirsty. Hannibal does not allow Will to taste his alcohol past what he can get from the man’s tongue. Will has long since divulged his family’s history with drinking.

            Will can hear now, only, and he finds it exciting. He can feel, as well; he touches the wood of the chair aside his knees: the silken hardness of it. He can smell the soft scent of cake or pastry that lingers in the house, that has been swelling in it ever since Will arrived but Hannibal refused to discuss. Under that is the scent of Hannibal himself which is strong, or perhaps Will has only grown to recognize it. That cologne he wears that smells almost drinkable.

            The sound of the oven door shutting. The clank of utensils and muted bangs of cabinets. The smooth glide of Hannibal’s feet across the floor, the measured steps he takes now at holding something he is being careful not to drop. Will waits for it distinctly: the setting of a dish or platter on the table. The scent is stronger, and so very warm.

            Hannibal is sitting now, in the chair he left behind. Will hears him settling, the weight of him. Will moves his feet along the floor, feels the coolness of it against his toes, his heels. He bites his lip.

            Sounds of cutting, just barely there. Will tilts his head slightly, his eyelashes resting softly against warmed cheeks. He gets the feeling he is not to speak, and so he doesn’t. Simply waits throughout the setting of another plate, squarely before him. The small thump of whatever cake Hannibal has cut now onto the plate. And the slide, again, the cutting this time with something duller than a knife. A fork, smooth through the cake, and lightly clanking against the dish.

            The insistent scent of spice is right before his mouth. Hannibal makes a sound, that which is surely the beginning syllable of the word _open_ and before he has it completely out, Will has opened his mouth. Little time passes between that and two thick fingers carrying a piece of cake pressing onto Will’s tongue.

            The noise he makes cannot be suppressed. It comes as unbidden as lightning. Will sucks at the fingers like a fawn after milk, and feels his stomach twist in mourning when Hannibal pulls his now slick fingers away. But Will chews and swallows and the flavors of cinnamon, molasses, honey, candied pecans are some consolation. When he’s swallowed, he opens his mouth again immediately, and Hannibal rewards him with another mouthful.

            Time and time again this is repeated, past the point of fullness, though Will is sure that that was never the point at all. He can do nothing now but take, chew, swallow and open his mouth for more. Take whatever he is given. He, once, does not allow one of Hannibal’s fingers to leave his mouth so quickly. He sucks around it, flicks his tongue against the paintbrush-roughened pad, and rubs the sharp heels of his hands fervently against his jeans. Fidgets himself nearly into orgasm, though when Hannibal seems to take notice of how riotous he is becoming, he makes Will wait a full few minutes before resuming.

            Will thinks it is finished when he hears Hannibal push the plate away. Will takes stock of his stomach and thinks he might have eaten too much, but would never in his life regret it. He does not yet open his eyes.

            He hears Hannibal rise from the chair. Feels him move in closer. Smells him, that leather scent, and the bourbon on his breath. And soon he is tasting the man, their mouths connecting easily, Will opening himself for Hannibal the way he has been instructed, the way Hannibal likes him.

            The man’s hand, gentle, cradling Will’s chin. He breaks their mouths apart and whispers into Will’s ear, “Honey.”

            Will, now, barely opens his eyes. Vision blurry on the soft chandelier lighting, and strands of Hannibal’s ochre hair. “Huh?”       

            “You taste like honey,” Hannibal says, and kisses him again.

 

*

 

At times, Will allows himself to think about it in its entirety. What it would be like for Hannibal Lecter to break him in. Lately he cannot tear himself from the thought, or the want. It threads itself into him, spider-like with precision, and as translucent as a web.

            There would be an undressing. There would be a first time: the way all first times in all things occur which is, inevitably, in slow-motion. The wide expanse of Hannibal’s hands smoothing the fabric from Will’s sleek, nearly hairless body. The soft collapse of the clothes on the floor, around Will’s ankles. Hannibal himself guiding Will’s smaller hands across his own clothes. Unfastened buttons. A zipper. The long-awaited appearance of skin Will has never seen before. The final reveal of that soft curl of chest hair Will has glimpsed fiendishly with a craned neck and grin. There would be a press. Their bodies together in blessed reconstruction of great sculptures: Greek things Will has seen in textbooks which stand heavy with history in fountains. Burnished in the sun, or the low lamplight of Hannibal’s bedroom. There would be the soft give of the bed. There would be infinite attention paid to Will’s geography. Little inlets and soft mountains. The scrubland of his pubic hair. Trickles of saliva. This to merge with Hannibal’s own: the strong ridge of his shoulders; the mists of perspiration over lowland and highland. The crevasse between them which is closed so quickly, so deftly, and ignites a burning pink in Will’s cheeks, a gasp on his lips tinged with pain, and a flutter of his eyelashes as he buries his face into Hannibal’s boundless charity.

 

*

 

In the hazy swirl of midnight, Will dreams. He dreams of his own bedroom: dark, stripped of furniture but a lone chair.

            Will stands behind it, naked and frail. He does not feel afraid as he did when he was young. He used to hate the dark and the things he swore lurked in it. Will has a feeling of surety in his chest and it blooms when he lifts a hand to find a knife in it. Gleaming faintly. He looks again at the chair in which someone now sits – a girl, seemingly, from the long hair covering her back. Will cannot see her face.

            In front of the girl is Hannibal, who is dressed and holding a box. Will remembers seeing that somewhere – the red lacquering, the sleekness, the gold latch – though cannot rightly place it. The girl in the chair begins to shiver. Her voice nearly startles Will; it sounds like a whisper in the winter-shorn trees:

            “Will. Oh. Will. What have you–”

            Will raises the knife. Hannibal opens the box.

 

*

 

Wednesday evening finds Will in a foul mood. He sits in the passenger seat of his father’s Ram as the truck pulls up into a driveway remembered from Will’s childhood. He and Abigail would often play here, in the Hobbs’ front yard before he stole her out to the dead end and beyond. The drainage pipe where once she slipped and sprained her holy ankle, and afterward Will didn’t hear the end of it from either of his parents for a week.

            The engines shuts off and Will’s father turns to him in the half-dark. “Try not to look so miserable,” he says. “It’s just dinner.”

            _It’s not just dinner_ , Will wants to say. _I had to come straight home from school for this. I missed out on going to Mr. Lecter’s house and eating the best food I’ve ever had and having his tongue down my throat and you know what else? Because I had to go home with everyone else, I had to walk with Abigail who wouldn’t stop trying to hold my hand on the way. And she kept talking about stuff I couldn’t give a shit about, like intramurals and the science fair and did the freshmen scream louder than the juniors at the last pep rally cause she sure thought so. What a fucking crock._

            But he says, “Yeah. Sure thing.”

            He’d almost forgotten the Hobbs’ house. Almost. He remembers the last time he was here, the last time he walked through that oak doorframe and into the bright softness of their living room. After his mother’s funeral, when his father looked so grief-stricken he might have tried to drown himself in the filth of Marsh County River, the pastor and his wife invited them here for tea and cookies. Will remembers the cookies were slightly overdone and no one talked much. But he does remember being grateful to the Hobbs family, even to Abigail, who sat by his side with her hair in two plaits. He wishes he could find in him some of that gratefulness now but when he looks inside himself, there is none. There is none.

            On the table before them is roast chicken, garlic-flecked green beans and mashed potatoes with what seems an obscene amount of butter. Will chews despondently. On a nearby smaller table sits the gas station wildflowers that Will’s father purchased on the way here. They are pink and blue and some petals fell off in the car. Abigail’s mother put them in cold water in a vase more beautiful than they are immediately. She called Will and his father “such sweet boys”.

            Though dinner conversation is largely pointed only at Will’s father—

            _How’re things going with the landscaping?_

_You’re doing amazing in the program._

_Do you think they’re going to get that pothole in the school parking lot patched up?_

            –Will is fine with this. He prefers it. He can place himself on autopilot and chew his flavorless food and stare straight between Abigail and her mother, to the wall where an owl-shaped clock hangs, and he can think of Hannibal in his home across town. He can think of what the two of them would have been doing if not for this interruption. On a good day, Will can get in nearly four hours with Hannibal after school. Much can be accomplished in four hours. It is possible, in fact, that tonight might have been the night Hannibal would finally do it – that Will would find it within himself to be winning enough, to be charming and alluring enough so that the man forgets whatever is holding him from taking Will the way Will wants to be taken. The way, perhaps, he needs to be taken.

            “Will? Will?”

            Will jolts, and realizes one of his hands has drifted under the table to rub lightly at the burgeoning erection in his jeans. He feels warm and looks across the table to Abigail who looks to have no idea.

            She is smiling. “You wanna go outside for a bit?”

            The question itself seems innocent, but Will can tell by the stillness of the adults that they must be waiting for the children to leave the room. Grown up talk. It takes everything in Will not to roll his eyes.

            _I’m more adult than any of you know_ , he thinks, and rises from the table to walk outside with Abigail.

            On the front porch, the wood creaks beneath Will’s sneakers. The door shuts behind him, soft under Abigail’s timid pressure. The air smells different. Like wet rock and earth. Sky is a patchy grey, the moon obscured. Rain will come, though Will isn’t sure when.

            He sits on the topmost step, elbows on knees, chin in his hands. Abigail sidles in beside him, closer than he wants her to be, and further than he knows she wants to be. But he looks over his shoulder, at the lit windows of the living room and says, nearly into her ear, “They’re not payin attention.”

            Like magic. She slides in the rest of the way, two branch-thin arms wrapping tightly around Will’s wiry bicep. She breathes in deep the scent of him.

            “Hey,” Will says, “what’re they talkin about anyway?”

            “Don’t know,” she murmurs. “You smell so good.”

            Will knows he smells like sweat, but he thanks her regardless. He would be content for silence but he knows it is not meant to be when she continues, in something almost a whisper: “I didn’t think this’d ever happen, Will. That you’d… well, I guess I’d given up hope. You know. A long time ago. There was a time when I thought you liked me when we were kids, but.”

            “Guess God hasn’t forsaken you.”

            She smiles. He can feel it against his skin. “Can I tell you something?”

            “You can tell me anything.”

            “Well, it’s… it might sound pretty bad. It’s just that–” She plays with the hem of his shirt. “But back when your mom died, when you stopped coming to services, I was really worried about you. And I think, in fact I _know_ , it wasn’t just for your sake, but I guess for my own. I felt like the most selfish person. I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t want you to change the way I knew you would. The way you did. I wanted the Will who used to pull on my hair and kill bugs for me. I wanted the Will who flicked my front teeth and called me Rabbit. And I wanted him for me.” The wind blows through the trees and shakes the seashell wind chime tied to the porch. It rings effortless and complicated at once. “I prayed about it a long time. I kept asking God to forgive me for being that way, to help me stop being that way.”

            Will finally looks down at her. “And?” he asks, quiet. “Did God help you?”

            She is staring at his mouth. Then, slowly, her gaze rises to meet his and she begins to speak. The front door to the house opens, and the long rectangle of light falls over them on the porch. Shadows like fairytale monsters with it, that of their parents. When Will turns back to see his father, he cannot tell the look in the man's eyes as he grips the doorjamb.

           

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments appreciated.


	4. Bloodletting

“Dad, if you’d just listen–”

            “No, Will. Absolutely not. How could you lie to me like that? For however long?”

            “It’s only been a couple weeks, first off and second–”

            “I’m not going to play with you, Will. Not this time. What made you think it was okay to spend all that time there without telling me? I thought you were at home, at least in our neighborhood. God, anything could have happened to you and I’d’ve had no clue where–”

            “If something had happened to me, which there’s no way it would’ve, then Mr. Lecter would’ve called or. Or something. But I was fine. I was just fine.”

            “Don’t give me that. What were you doing there? What were you doing every day?”

            “What do you think? Helping him with–”

            “Stop it, Will. I wasn’t born yesterday. He didn’t need any more help with his house – grown men don’t keep kids around unless–”

            “Oh, come _on_. What? No way.”

            “And stop interrupting me. You’re better off keeping quiet.”

            “I’m not gonna stop. You don’t even _know_ him. We were just hanging out, that’s all.”

            “Hanging out, doing what, exactly?”

            “Nothing. Nothing, just. Talking. And he cooks a lot. He makes me food, and we talk about how things’re with me, and how things’re with him. You don’t even know him and you think he’s some kinda freak, but you liked him fine a minute ago.”

            “Before I knew you were sneaking off all the time to see him.”

            “I wasn’t _sneaking_ , Jesus!”

            “That’s why you never said Jack about him then. All this time I thought you were at the house. And making Abigail keep your secret for you–”

            “I didn’t _make_ her do anyth–”

            “E _nough_ , Will!” His father slams on the break and the two of them jolt against their seatbelts as the Ram relaxes into the top of their driveway. The neighborhood is dark but for the dull shine of streetlights and their own porchlight. Will is half curled in on himself. He feels his heart in a tremor and looks across the darkness to his father’s form. “You can’t fool me like that, Will, it just won’t work. What you said to Abigail was horrible – and in front of her parents! I’ll be apologizing for your ass for a week. You’re _not_ going over to Hannibal Lecter’s anymore. I’ll make sure of it.”

            “You can’t do that,” Will says, and hears the astonishment in his own voice. “You… you can’t do that!”

            “Home and school, those’re the only two places you’ll be for at least a month.”

            Will grips one knee. He stares where he thinks his father’s eyes must be. “Or you’ll what?” he asks quietly.

            “What’d you say?”

            “I said, I can’t go over to Mr. Lecter’s or else you’ll _what_?” He pauses – just an instant. Unstraps his seatbelt. “Nothing! You’re not gonna do a goddamn thing – you don’t have it in you to!” He opens the door with an elbow and drops into the gravel of the driveway. Stomps up the old stairs and into the house. When he reaches his room, he slams the door shut so hard the jamb bangs and the house nearly judders. He can feel his father enter the house slowly after – just a shadow of Will’s anger. The man goes to his room without delay and his own door shuts softly.

            Will paces the hard grey carpet. Yanks off his shirt and throws it in the general direction of the hamper. Everything was fine. Everything was _fine_ until Abigail apparently opened her gigantic mouth to her parents sometime in the week. When the Hobbs’ front door opened an hour ago, when Abigail and Will looked up into those looming shadows, he felt something in his gut which later turned out to be intuition. He should have known he couldn’t trust her – Rabbit or no. Abigail belonged foremost to her parents.

            The tenor of his father’s voice was strange. He held tight the door jamb and said, “Will, why the hell’ve you been going to see Hannibal Lecter?”

            Dumbfounded, Will did not immediately respond.

            From beside the man, Abigail’s mother put a thin hand to her mouth. “Maybe it isn’t such a big deal, Joshua. Maybe it’s…” she trailed off, helpless, and in that moment Will thinks he hated her with such a searing intensity it could have burned the house down.

            The pastor said nothing, only sighed, and Abigail flinched at Will’s side, having released his arm. Will found he could say nothing to his father but his attention had turned. He looked to Abigail – her, in the living room light, her eyes shimmering, her pressed clothes and pink mouth he had kissed.

            Will said, “You _bitch_ , you _told_!”

            “I… Will, really, it slip–”

            “Oh, fuck off, yeah, sur–”

            Will felt himself grabbed. By the upper arm, just against his armpit, and was nearly dragged down the stairs. It was too much at the time. His mind was too raw and alive with feelings of remorse, betrayal, embarrassment – embarrassment! imagine! – but now, alone in his room, he feels something else too. Excitement? Or is it… yes, Will believes it to be a tinge of relief.

            Will pauses in his pacing and looks at his closed door. Down the hall, his father rests. _So_ , he thinks, _you aren’t a lost cause after all._

            But the fact remains that his father was more bark than bite. Will could feel it: like electricity leaving the air in the wake of a storm. After the initial dragging of Will into the Ram, after they had left the street, his father’s anger diminished and turned into something else. Perhaps sorrow. Perhaps he felt sorrow knowing now that where he once thought Will was becoming more manageable, it turns out he was only sneaking, as the man had put it.

            Sorrow is a useless emotion.

            Will thinks it suddenly: he could leave the house now, and go to Hannibal Lecter’s. He could sneak out of the window and return before his father knew what was what. He thinks about it for a long while, standing motionless and shirtless amidst the shadows. Finally, he slips out of his jeans and he goes to bed. He is never dreamless anymore.

 

*

 

Morning arrives, an array of pinks across the sky. The car ride from the neighborhood and down the long line of James Campbell is silent but for radio hums and commercials. Will shuffles his feet against his backpack in the footwell.

            As they each readied for the day in the house, there was the usual silence. Pregnant now with reproach. There has never been that before. Even when Will was younger, when his mother was alive, and he received spankings and harsh treatment for wrongdoings. Always, it was as a summer rain. Tumultuous in the moment and strong. And the sky was clear afterward. The air tasted sweet. He and his father were as guileless as children after a fight. Neither remembering much of what it had been about.

            In the streaming sun, Will sits morose and silent. His father looks much the same. White Hill High comes slowly into view. Through the gate and approaching the roundabout, they fall into line by the curb. Quite before his normal stop, Will grabs his bag.

            “Here is fine,” he says, and unlocks the door.

            “All right.”

            Will jumps out, and fixes his father with one final heavy frown.

            His father’s gaze is steady. “Just so you know, Will,” he says, “I’ve called and asked your teachers to keep an eye on you. And Ms. Everson next door will be waiting to see you come home in the afternoon.”

            Will blanches, his expression caught between disbelief and horror. “Wha…”

            “And apologize to Abigail today. I mean it.” He reaches over and shuts the door. It sounds loud, even over the churning voices of his schoolmates filling the parking lot. A second passes and the Ram is following the moving line out of the lot. Will watches him go, until he is unseen, and turns for the school building. Unsurprisingly, it looks prisonlike.

 

*

 

He thinks it strange.

            Though he has been attending school all this time, he has never felt quite as _here_ as he currently does. The walls were once ethereal things – easily sidestepped or blasted through. The gates, nothing more than anthills to be leapt over. The teachers, faculty, students: ghosts, just ghosts, wandering desolate halls. He could pass through them, if he wished.

            Will finds himself amidst the change of classes in a cagey panic. He bumps into James Renfry between first and second, then steps on Hayley Woods’ heel near the boys’ bathrooms. Though no student pays him particular attention, he feels something from them, as if they must know. The day goes on and, yes, surely they must because it is not so uncommon for Will to never bother showing up to fourth period. He finds chemistry sensationally boring and unnecessary. When he sits at the svelte black tables, in his oft-unused seat, he feels eyes on him.

            The teachers are worse than that. He knows, _knows_ they are looking at him. Perhaps it is only a few – Mrs. Crawford, surely – but it feels like it’s all of them. All of them, staring at him, watching for any untoward movement, any sign of bolting for the front doors and the open air and Hannibal Lecter’s house.

            And do they know? Do they know the extent of it?

            What did his father say exactly? Will sits with his head upon his crossed forearms, while the class lecture continues on around him. Electrons, photons. Will shuts his eyes tight and he imagines his father sitting in their living room, in the shy light of early morning. Before Will arose, before he even stirred. His father sitting in that ever soft and worn armchair of his. Phone in hand, held up to his ear securely. The house silent. And he, murmuring into the receiver:

            _Could you do me a favor, Principal Downey, and look after my son, Will?_

            Yes.

            _He’s prone to skipping out, I know you know._

            Yes.

            _Normally I wouldn’t ask this of you. I know it’s my responsibility to keep hold of my own boy. But there’s been something lately._

            Yes, yes, yes.

            _He’s been sneaking off to see Hann—_

            No. No, Will cannot imagine his father saying that. His father is a stiff man, a proud man, despite what death and God has wrought upon him. He would keep family matters family matters.

            Then, Will decides, it is not faculty knowledge that Will has been going to see Hannibal Lecter. It is only a few children who know, who pay it no mind. Will remembers the way they looked at him over the lunch table, curious about the man but not overly concerned. Will did not think it caused Abigail any concern either. But apparently.

            While Will languishes in chemistry, he knows that Abigail is down the hall, in her French class. He has caught glimpses of her throughout the hurried morning: blue eyes watery over the shoulders of her deacons. That bottom lip atremble. Will thinks her eyes said to him in that crowded moment: _Are you still angry with me?_

            He will let his absence speak for itself.

 

*

 

He ran home. The last bell was as a gunshot to track and field. There was only an instant of hesitation in Will’s legs – that instant where the memory of Hannibal’s hands on his hips, and Hannibal’s fingers in his mouth, nearly drew him in the opposite direction of his home.

            For that instant, he thought: _I have to let Hannibal know what’s happened to me. He won’t know if I don’t tell him._

            But the threat of Mrs. Everson tattling on him, of the faculty members watching even then from the building, was too much. And he ran, to get away from any possibility of Abigail sidling up to him, mewling about where he was at lunch. Instead of traipsing off the grounds to Exxon or joining her at the lunch table, he sat in the gymnasium, watching the janitors clean the bleachers and empty the trashcans. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast – a slice of toast grabbed hurriedly from the toaster.

            When he arrives in the neighborhood, he feels as one lead by a chain. The wind blows and tosses his curls and he glares at every stray leaf and car rolling by. From a very slight remove, he thinks himself a child pouting and this sickens him. But he cannot help it. It’s been far over a year since anything has gone right.

            To the left of his house is one of similar size. The garden there is recently trimmed down for the upcoming cold, and the white paint along the house is fresher. In the darkened windows, Will can see two rounded gleams like glasses, like owl-eyes, watching him from afar. Ms. Everson.

            Will walks up the gravel driveway and waves at her cheerily with his middle finger raised.

            _Tell my dad about that_ , he thinks and slams the door shut behind him. The house rattles, a bit. It feels good to cause racket.

            There is a clock hanging on the living room wall – 3:06 PM. Right now, were the world aligned correctly, he would perhaps be sitting for a painting, or eating something amazing, or rubbing himself against Hannibal like a cat in heat, grateful for any scraps thrown to him. He sways on his feet, shuts his eyes. It isn’t fair. It isn’t—

            The phone rings. Will trudges across the room and falls upon the couch, belly down, arms angled over the armrest to reach the phone. Pressing it to his ear, he sighs out: “Graham.”

            “Hello, Will.”

            The hair on the back of his neck rises. “Mr. Lecter?”

            “You were missing. So I wondered where you were. It’s good to hear your voice.”

            “But… but how’d you get my number?”

            “Your father gave it to me. For emergencies.”

            “Oh,” he says, bites his lower lip. His body is warm, slightly relaxed at the tone on the other end of the line. All day, he was wrapped in the static and yelling of his classmates. Now, calm. Now, serene. It has been but two days and already he has missed it. “Has, uh. Has my dad called you or anything?”

            “No, not at all. Should he have?”

            Will hesitates. He says, “He kind of found out about me going over there after school.” Adds hurriedly: “I didn’t tell him! _Abigail_ opened her fat mouth. Now, he’s got me cooped up over here. He’s actually got people watching me – like at school and even our old ass next-door neighbor. He thinks – he thinks–”

            “I understand. That is unfortunate,” Hannibal says, in a tone as if he is doing something else. Will hears the dull undulation of a knife against a cutting board.

            He glares into the phone. “You sure don’t sound too broken up about it!”

            Hannibal laughs gently. “On the contrary, Will. I find it deeply troubling.”

            “Oh, yeah?”

            “Oh yes,” he says, lowly. Will shivers, glued to the couch. Hannibal continues, “But I cannot go against your father’s wishes. It would be best to not cause trouble under the circumstances.”

            “Wh… what if I wanted to cause trouble,” Will offers. “I could sneak out anyway. I could come see you.”

            “Absolutely not.”

            “But why not?” Will’s voice rises in protest but already he feels a slight relief. It is one thing to leave whenever he chooses on his own. It is quite another to do so when he has expressly been told not to. There is something in him – this he calls childish restraints – which frosts the bottom of his stomach when he thinks of it. Yet, the warmth of Hannibal’s house calls to him. “I thought you wanted to see me. Don’t you miss hanging out and… and doing stuff?”

            “Of course.”

            Will rubs his cheek into the armrest. Groans.

            “Will, my advice to you is to listen to your father. It would not be wise to make a fuss over this.”

            “Make a _fuss_?” Will says, unbelieving. “He won’t let me go to church, you know. He won’t let me do anything that lets me see you. I’m being kept prisoner!”

            “I understand. But as a child, you must defer to your father. I cannot do anything for you.”

            Before Will can answer, the line dies. Will stares at the phone in hand for a long moment, grip so tight it hurts. Then places it back. He doesn’t move from the couch until his father arrives.

 

*

           

Will does not begin conversation, nor does he completely look at his father. He can feel it already, the slippage. Though it seems his anger was fresher, hotter, yesterday than it had been in a year, already it diminishes and the atmosphere in the house is leavening. Will cannot stand it, and he spends the majority of the evening in his room, declining the meal his father brought from whatever fast food restaurant caught his eye on the way home.

            An hour before he thinks he will go to bed, he hears those familiar footsteps in the hall. Soft, but heavy. The carpet squishing under the man’s weight.

            From the bed, Will turns his face half out of the pillow and stares at the door. At the shadow beneath it.

            “I know you’re there,” he says and rolls his eyes.

            “Did you apologize to Abigail like I asked?”

            “She wasn’t there today.”

            “Will, I know that isn’t true.”

            Will snorts softly. He turns his face into the pillow and expects for those footsteps to retreat. He waits a long moment, but hears nothing. Peering out from the pillow, he sees the shadow unmoving.

            His father’s voice sounds very far away. “Will… are you really so mad because I won’t let you see Hannibal Lecter? Is that why?”

            Clenching the bedcovers beneath him, he thinks, _It’s everything. It’s everything._

            “You know I only have what’s best for you in mind.”

            He sounds so tired. The scrape of his voice as if from his death bed. The sound of it ratchets anger up in Will, such that he is hot from his feet to his face. Sweat breaks out along the straights of his arms and he feels himself ready to throw his pillows at the door. His books. Everything not bolted down. _Liar_ , he thinks wildly, _liar! If you really cared, you’d fuckin well show it! You’d fuckin well—_

            There is a sigh. The footsteps recede, as they should have minutes ago.

 

*

 

In the night, Will lies in bed, in a puddle of his own sweat. He grips the sheets, clenches his teeth. His pale, smooth face is pink with strain and furrowed.

            He used to know he was dreaming. Here, he does not. He sits in the wide expanse of Hannibal’s backyard in one of the chairs dragged from the man’s dining room table. Hardwood and sheened in the sunlight. Will grips the sides of the chair, attempting to move. He tries to force himself up. It’s stuck.

            For some reason, he is unable to move his head or shut his eyes. He stares at the girl in the chair across from him, her face placid. He thinks he recognizes her – from somewhere, surely, for White Hill is not a big town and at some point he must have seen most everyone. But he cannot place her. She looks like Abigail, but it cannot be her. Abigail does not have such a countenance about her. She does not look serene and calm, with an air of aloofness in her gaze. It cannot be her.

            Will tries harder to move from the chair. The girl is dressed simply in long off-pink fabric which is sleeveless and flows to cover her feet. Her soft skin looks to be made of the same material. Will can hear his jaw creak.

            “Will,” she says, and Will begins to scream. Rocking in the chair from which he cannot free himself. He screams long and loud; healthy, as when he was born. Her voice is of his mother. “Will, darlin, what have you done?”

            His aloofness. Once, his father said he got it from his mother. Once, his father said they stood in the very same way. They looked at people in the very same way.

            _Why am I just now remembering that?_ he thinks through his screaming. His eyes widening. So wide the whites streak with red.

            The girl sits through his screaming with that look on her face. It changes, softly, briefly, into one of pain. This passes. She adjusts herself upon the chair, twin to Will’s own, and lifts the hem of her skirt. The white of her legs revealed and higher, higher. Settles it around her waist and opens her legs where there is a red gash. It bubbles, makes a choked sound like drowning and Will thinks he will vomit. He thinks he won’t be able to help it. The gash continues on, and red flows down the creamy color of her thighs. Down the legs of the chair to pool in the grass.

            She says again, in that same voice that tucked Will in at night, “What have you done?”

            The blood runs through the grass. The blood reaches his feet.

 

*

 

Will wakes in tremors.

 

*

 

The sky of late has been grey. There is a dim patchiness to it, and the air is heavy; no longer the easy winds of oncoming autumn. Red and orange leaves are soggy in the gutters, and the breezeways of the school are misty. Will stands in his jacket, hands in pockets, and watches as the students from lunch period file haphazardly out of the cafeteria. They walk yards in front of him and he waits until he sees the familiar brown hair, the glimmer of blue eyes in a sea of drear.

            She sees him; instant, like magic. He knew she would. Standing deer-still, he holds her startled gaze for a second, and jerks his head off to the side. He motions towards the parking lot behind the school where the grass rolls into sparse trees. When her mouth opens, he leaves, and he waits for her on the green picnic table far beyond the tree line, surrounded by trash and some rank odor that is like fetid condoms and sour milk.

            He is there for five minutes, and hears the bells ring in the buildings. Her footsteps follow the sound, soft and timid in the dry grass.

            “Will,” she says.

            “Sit here.” He pats the tabletop, where it is slightly wet from an overnight drizzle. She does as she’s told and Will does not look at her face. He worries he will not see her hesitant smile, or those ever-present rabbit teeth. He worries he will see a likeness of his mother, a likeness of himself. He looks at the ground.

            “I… I wanted to say I was sorry,” she begins, “but you didn’t let me finish. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, I swear I didn’t. I was just talking to my parents and I mentioned you were getting along with—well, they were talking about him, Mr. Lecter, saying he seems to keep to himself most times and I said he had you for a friend. I didn’t know it was a secret. You didn’t tell me it was a secret.”

            When Will says nothing, she grabs hold of his hand with both of hers. They are warm.

            “Please, Will,” she says and her voice waters, “I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re mad at me.”

            Will looks at their hands together. The way hers tremble.

            She says, “I’m sure your dad’ll let you go back. You just tell him what a nice man he is, and… and it’ll all be fine.”

            “Did I fuck up?” Will asks, soft. “Is that what that dream was about? When I called you a bitch.”

            “Huh?”

            “Maybe they _were_ just feverdreams.”

            “Will, are you all right?”

            He continues to stare at the sodden ground for a long moment. She squeezes his hands again. Dimly, sounds rise from the school. Her feet shuffle against each other on the bench below and he feels her nervousness as she misses her fifth period class. Finally, Will squeezes her hand back. He looks up into her face which is, blessedly, her face. She stares at him with empty doe-eyes, those teeth nibbling at her lower lip, indenting.

            “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he says, enunciating each word carefully. “I envy you.”

            “What? Will, why?”

            “You talk to God. He talks back. Doesn’t He? Doesn’t He tell you what to do?”

            “Y…” She pauses, and looks, for all the world, confused. As if he is quizzing her on a Martian subject. “Yes… I…”

            “Does He talk to you in your dreams?”

            “N…”

            There is silence. Abigail makes a soft sound down in her throat and, bit by bit, she begins to remove her hands from Will’s. Their warmth recedes and Will watches them go. He grips them back again and holds tight. Looks up into her glacier eyes. “You know,” he says, “we were friends when we were little. And I thought maybe it’d be easiest to use you in that way. I mean, you already liked me. I kept havin these weird dreams, and I think they were telling me to hurt you. I think they were telling me to hurt you bad, and if I did that, God’d give my mom back.” He feels her fingers, birdlike bones, trembling beneath his steady hold. “Every night I’d wake up with come in my pants, and my heart racing. It’s nuts the things you’d do if God says to. It’s nuts the things I’d do to make everything okay.”

            He hears her, her quick intakes of breath, but continues to look at their clasped hands. “You’re lucky, Rabbit,” he says. “Your daddy never spanked you.”

 

*

 

Will lies on the couch in the dark. The house smells of old coffee grounds from the trash that has yet to be emptied. The windows are shut, and on the roofs and small awnings of the house, he can hear rain pattering down. Soft.

            The phone is in hand. Will called Hannibal Lecter, but he did not answer.

            He shuts his eyes and only opens them when the keys turn in the front door. It opens, bringing Will’s father inside along with fresh air. The rushing scent of rain. Will sighs and places the phone back on the stand. He moves to go to his room.

            “Stay right there.”

            Will pauses, half sitting on the couch. Legs swung over the side. “Why?” he asks, back turned to the front door.

            It shuts, and the house is closed off again. “You know why. What you said to Abigail today.” The tread of his work boots are heavy and slightly sloshed with rainwater. Mud. He hears the man round the couch, the hardwood near the door left behind in favor of carpet. “The school called me and Garrett saying you threatened her.”

            “Yeah?” Will has yet to move.

            “That you said you had dreams about hurting her.”

            “Yeah,” Will says.

            “Will, I want to know what in _God’s name_ has gotten into you.”

            He stands, finally. Back still turned towards his father, and arms crossed over his thin chest. “Oh,” he says. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

            “I mean it, Will–”

            “‘I mean it, Will!’” Will’s voice is suddenly shrill, trembling with rage and nearly hysterical – he whirls around on one heel, arms open, eyes shining like a hunter’s in the dark. He continues to parrot his father in this voice: “‘I mean it, I mean it!’ Give me a break, you don’t _mean_ it! You don’t fucking _mean_ it! You haven’t – I can’t re _mem_ ber the last time you meant it!” He can see his father, just his silhouette in the drizzling light from the window. The way he stands so still. “Ever since Mom died! You damn near jumped in the grave with her! I _have_ been having dreams – dreams about helping you, about helping _us_! I’ve been doing things I don’t wanna do – you think I _wanted_ to stick my fingers in Abigail Hobbs’ cunt? No, but I did it, and I’d’ve done more, I’ve gone _all the way_ to make things right again and all you can say is you mean it! You mean it? Fuck you. Half-ass talking-tos won’t work but you’re not _man enough_ to–”

            The sound Will makes cannot be parsed. It is somewhere between surprise and confusion, a base sound almost inhuman. His father has crossed the space between them so quickly Will did not register it and has only done so when he feels himself being taken up under one arm.

            His father works in silence and with shocking quickness. One hand gripping Will at his arm, spinning him, the other shoving those ill-fitting and dirt-heavy jeans down his legs. In the dark, nothing is seen. Will wriggles, tries to catch sight of the man’s face – to search it for fury, but there is a blackness there. A cipher. Less than nothing.

            Will is bare-legged, his boxers yanked down simply from being caught in his jeans. He falls with the weight of his father dragging him down – the near sixty pounds the man has on Will. He sits on the couch and Will lands on his stomach over the man’s thighs. Somehow, in some way, he feels the incredible, unexpected sting of leather against the back of his thighs. He did not see or feel the man retrieve his belt and yet here it is, singing against his skin in that same spot: where his thighs meet his backside, where he is impossibly tender, like veal.

            The sounds coming from Will are strangled, and continue to be strange to his own ears. As if it is not him making them. He stares forward, down, into the darkness of the carpet, and the rain continues on harder, his father is hitting him harder, and the wind and Will both scream.

            And this could have happened in one instant, and this could have happened over the course of an Age. Will can only jerk and lurch with each swing, unable to move further. His toes curl and scrunch. The heat in his face is burning, his hands gripping tightly his father’s jeans, and there is nothing for him to process. He breathes in staccato gulps. He clamps his jaw. And the strikes keep coming until they, suddenly, aren’t. And Will, seemingly with the force of his higher mind returning, can feel it as his stomach fills up with a cold sense of shame. Like ponding water in a pothole. He turns to face his father as a streak of lightning flashes pink outside of the window, illuminating the sky, their expressions, which are somewhere on the spectrum of horror. Will is aware of it; his own flushed erection which presses insistently against his father’s thigh. The slight leaking. Will opens his mouth, and it caves in grief. Scrambling up, he jerks his boxers and jeans over his hips, half turned away. His father is unmoving. Will zips, shoulders hunched, and cannot spare the man even a glance before taking off for the hall. And he leaves the man sitting there, staring at where he was like there is still someone to see.

 

*

 

For hours, every noise Will hears – be it out in the rain or the heat kicking on in the vents or some squirrel rustling over the roof – he thinks it to be his father’s footsteps approaching the room. Face in the pillows, whole body burning with a strange cocktail of shame and excitement, he realizes he cannot take it another moment and he, quietly, opens the window and leaves the house.

            He takes his coat and jams on a woolen hat to protect his ears from the wind and cold. As he walks down his street, wary of Ms. Everson’s owl-eyes in the windows, he pretends he doesn’t know where he is going. As if his body has taken him prisoner and acts on its own. He wishes it were so. He wishes it a lot.

            The walk to Hannibal Lecter’s home is long. Longer for the rain pouring down which seems to increase in intensity and not diminish. Intermittently, a lightning bolt strikes the sky, followed thereafter by thunder and Will thinks of his father’s belt and his own yelps. When he finally comes up onto the grand porch of the house, he is soaked through to the bone and shivering incessantly. He knocks on the door, removing his sodden hat with the other hand. Hears footsteps on the other side of the door. A pause that seems to take forever.

            “Will,” Hannibal says when the door opens. Warmth and light fall down on Will. Hannibal stands pillar-still and is smiling with only his eyes. “Come in. Did you walk in this rain?”

            “Y-Yeah,” he says and does as he’s told. The door shuts behind him and he drips a larger and larger puddle in the foyer. Bites his lower lip and looks up from under his bangs. “Sorry about – I mean, I…” He looks down, at his wet shoes. Says in a whisper: “I just wanted to see you.”

            He hears Hannibal chuckle of all things. “Don’t apologize for that. Does your father know you’re here?”

            “I guess not.”

            When Will looks up again, Hannibal’s whole face is alight with his smile.

 

*

 

“—and I just told her. I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I told her about my God dreams, and what I thought I had to do. I just wanted it so _bad_ , Mr. Lecter, so fucking bad,” Will says, his words dully slurred. He is drunk. Sitting on the couch in the low lamplight of Hannibal’s living room with a glass and a half of bourbon sloshing in his stomach. His cheeks furnace red. His shirt and jeans were unsalvageable, sopping wet, and they are in Hannibal’s dryer tumbling in near silence. He sits leaned into the back of the couch in a shirt of Hannibal’s and his own blue boxers. Knees pressed together and touching Hannibal’s leg, Will has recounted everything. The things he saw in his dreams, what he saw as a way to get his mother back. To restore paradise lost. He licks his lips now with remnants of the bourbon still wetting them. “There were things I could only fully understand when I was sleeping.”

            “As dreams often are,” Hannibal says.

            “I don’t know exactly what I would have had to do to Abigail… hurt her. Maybe bad. Maybe that makes me a bad person.”

            Hannibal looks at him. Seems to take stock of the hazed look in his eyes, the laxness of his limbs. He sets his half-empty glass on the coffee table and rests an arm around Will’s slight shoulders. “I’m perhaps old-fashioned in this. But family comes first. I would not fault you for tending to them, even above a childhood friend. And who is to say she wouldn’t do the same, if it were her mother or father taken by God? To ask for Him to give them back is more than fair. It’s natural.”

            “Natural,” Will hums. Leans into Hannibal’s arm. “Sometimes I think there’s not much natural about me.”

            Still fresh in his mind is his father’s belt, and the instant it held from him. The look his father must have worn just then. What he must have thought. Will has been trying to imagine the look on his father’s face when he _realized_ , when he realized how Will _is_. When he felt Will. The only thing that reoccurs, that seems true, is _bafflement_. And that is the worst thing. Somewhere in Will’s mind, he knows he will have to return home again. But perhaps he will return to a place even his mother’s presence cannot fix. The idea is so terrible Will forces it from his thoughts; he looks into Hannibal’s eyes and leans up, placing their mouths together. Holds himself open, placid, yielding, as he knows Hannibal likes. Hannibal pulls Will into his lap, tongue in his mouth, and for an instant it is enough until suddenly it isn’t. Will breaks from him, fists balled against the man’s chest, feeling those broad hands on his low back.

            Their breaths together. Mouths open. Will struggles not to whine and whines anyway. He says, “Please.”

            “Please what, Will,” Hannibal says. He nips at Will’s lower lip.

            “Please _please_ ,” Will mutters. “If you don’t do it now, I don’t know what I’ll do.” He makes another helpless noise and grinds himself against Hannibal to show his meaning. He is hard already and whether this is left over from his father or this is newly manufactured by Hannibal, he does not know. He does not _care_. “If you don’t do it, I’ll scream. I’ll lose my fuckin mind.”

            Hannibal inhales smoothly. Dips both hands beneath the band of Will’s boxers and grips his backside fully, harshly, and with purpose. Will groans, his body strung tight, jamming his head into the crook of Hannibal’s neck.

            “Do you mean that, Will,” Hannibal says softly.

            Will can only mewl.

            “Very well,” he says, and Will can hear the smile, or is it a smirk? He lifts Will easily, standing from the couch. Will’s arms around his neck, legs around his waist. He slurs out nonsense and thank yous as he is carried up to the bedroom.

 

*

 

There was a time when Will’s father carried him to bed. It was a long time ago, so distant Will can barely recall it with any of his usual eidetic ability, and it was quite different than this. Will was perhaps slung over the man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes or carried haphazardly by his limbs. Laughing, giggling. Tossed into bed and tucked in with a _Night, you brat._ He’s sure something like that happened. It cannot be the alcohol tricking him.

            Hannibal sets him down just before the side of the bed; Will stands on unsure footing, wobbling, his face flushed with bourbon. He can barely understand it when Hannibal is taking his clothes gently from his body, with a deft hand and efficiency. Will shivers lightly under these hands and the clothes pool around his ankles. The room is dimly lit by one bedside lamp.

            “I won’t be cruel to you, Will,” Hannibal says, garnering Will’s opaque gaze. His strong hand cupping Will’s chin, tilting it upward. “I won’t draw out any suffering. There will be discomfort, but I will try to minimize it. You’ll feel good too.”

            _Gored. Like bein gored through._

            Will half-grins. Eyes dancing with alcohol. Hannibal says the weirdest things sometimes. “Yeah?” he asks.

            “Yes.”

            He kisses Will, and they taste the same. Uses his larger mass to push Will back onto the bed; sinking in. The give of the comforters, the scent of the room. Will runs his hands along the man’s still clothed arms, shoulders, chest. He doesn’t know if Hannibal will allow this, but he tries anyway: to unbutton the shirt. Uncoordinated and a far cry from the deftness with which Hannibal undressed him. But he remembers that he fantasized about this, about doing it this way, and he still wants it. Perhaps this is in some way communicated to Hannibal. He allows for the clumsiness, the inexperience. He is on top of Will, kissing into his neck, with just unbuckled slacks on, shirt cast aside. The soft fabric of the bedclothes is calming against Will’s thighs and backside, where the welts from a belt bloom newly.

            Will feels as if he is swimming within his own head. Hannibal surrounding him, heavy on him. The warmth of skin on skin. Over Hannibal’s shoulder, the muscles of his back, Will stares at the painting of Mischa with that box beneath it, and candles unlit on either side like a small altar. Will smiles lazily. He supposes it’s weird to be doing this in a room with Hannibal’s younger sister looking on – but there is nothing for it. Her likeness is all over the house.

            “Are you gonna tie me up?” Will asks, suddenly remembering what lies beneath the pillows attached to the headboard. He nudges against Hannibal.

            Hannibal forsakes Will’s neck for his ear. Will shudders, rubs his feet into the covers on either side of Hannibal’s legs. Slowly moves the fabric of his slacks down and down.

            “Not this time,” he whispers. “Next time.”

            Next time? Will releases a breathy laugh. Even through the haze of his drunkenness, he feels triumphant, vindicated. For all Hannibal’s protests thus far, he sure has changed his mind. “God,” Will says, moans. “I knew you– you wanted to. Knew it.” The words, though he doesn’t realize it, are badly slurred. “You wanted to from the beginning, huh. I could see it.” He half-laughs. “In your eyes.”

            “Yes, Will.” Hannibal’s other hand has reached over to the nightstand. Will hears him retrieve a small bottle from the drawer. “You have me all figured out.”

             Will giggles, nuzzles his face into Hannibal’s neck. Oh he smells so good. He smells so good.

             Two things at once: Hannibal’s mouth on his again, and one slickened finger pushing into Will. Both startle him minutely, and he gasps.

 _Like bein_ —

             It’s fine. Will is fine. He feels good – _it_ feels good – strange, but good. Will sighs into the kiss, throws his arms around Hannibal’s neck. He focuses not on the finger inside him, crooked and moving gently with the ease of lubricant, but on the man’s tongue in his mouth. The fullness of it, which reminds him of the accent. Which reminds him of first meeting Hannibal. Which reminds him that he too has wanted this from the beginning. Was it always heading here? He thinks so.

             Hannibal leaves his mouth, dipping down to suck at the nipple over Will’s heart. Will groans at this and the finger inside him moves faster. “Mr. Lecter,” he sighs and sharply inhales as he feels another equally wet finger prodding at him. He feels it breach and winces. The lubricant smells of lavender. The second finger is insistent.

             “Relax, Will.”

             “I… I’m trying.”

             “It’s all right.”

             Hannibal moves lower. Trailing saliva in licks and sucks down to Will’s pubic bone and buries his face there. Will feels him inhale. Feels that second finger continuing, fruitlessly, to prod. Will bites his lower lip. His hands are fidgeting within themselves at this discomfort until Hannibal’s mouth is on him, swallowing him, and then his hands rush instantly into Hannibal’s soft hair, gripping.

             Will makes a choked sound. Surprised. Somewhat awed. He looks down in disbelief, watching Hannibal’s head slowing pulling back, then sinking down again. The red of his lips over Will. The sensation of a tongue. In a place separate from Will’s mind – which is seizing up with both the drink and the wet heat now surrounding him, which he is helplessly bucking up into – he thinks it odd that he has not considered this. Certainly not Hannibal doing it to _him_. He has imagined many things, things he has heard joshed about from the seniors and what they do to their girlfriends. He has imagined these things between he and Hannibal. But not this. Why not this?

             Hannibal makes an undulation with his tongue. Will hums long and loud, opening the sound up into a groan.

             The feeling is such that he thinks there is nothing greater. A overly wide, lopsided smile fixes itself on Will’s face; his eyelashes flutter, and he thinks he is saying something – “M-Mr.Lec… ahh–” – just as he comes. Feels Hannibal swallow it down, the muscles of his throat working Will to exhaustion.

             Unaware of how his stomach had curled, how tightly he was holding his body, he falls back all at once into the wealth of pillows behind him. Eyes on the smooth ceiling, that smile’s ghostly twin hanging on his mouth. Everything he is has unknotted and Hannibal is working two fingers in him fully, stretching methodically. Will feels it suddenly and looks down: Hannibal stares at him with a dim gaze. There is semen at the corner of his mouth. His hair is a rumpled mess. He is naked now; burnished gold by lamplight. Will thinks he’s never seen anyone so handsome in his life.

             Hannibal leans forward again and kisses Will. There is a motion of his hands – again, this sound of the lubricant bottle unseen, and Hannibal stroking himself between his legs. Coating himself. Will tries not to think about—

_bleedin_

             —anything but Hannibal’s lips on his. Hannibal’s tongue against his. And how Will has wanted this, wanted this, wanted this. He evens his breathing. Hannibal is settled between Will’s legs and pushes in with a steady pressure. At Will’s fingers tightening on his shoulders, he does not hesitate. Nor at Will’s trembling and tightness again, all loose bliss of the orgasm forgotten. Will is panting into the man’s mouth – the heat, the intrusion, the pressure, how did he not account for these things? – and suddenly he is halfway seated inside.

             Will nearly screams when Hannibal first moves. He parts their mouths and makes a strangled sound, fingernails digging into the smooth skin at Hannibal’s back. When he thinks that’s all, that’s all he can stand, Hannibal forces more of himself in, _in_ , until he’s flush against Will and Will does, he gives a healthy scream.

             Hannibal hums into his ear. It is not laughter, but something akin to it. Sucks on Will’s earlobe and plants a hand on Will’s sweat-slickened hip to keep him steady, to keep his leg up. He pulls out nearly completely – Will exhales a hoarse sound – and drives back in.

_Gored._

_Like bein gored through._

            Yes, Will feels that. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling as he is fucked into the soft comforter, his body like a thunderhead harboring lightning. Hannibal picks up pace and Will feels his hips smacking against the welts, the sound filling the room as a rhythm for Will’s gasps, groans, pure babbling. The pain becomes stabbing. He can feel, distantly, himself tearing and he begins scratching at Hannibal’s back, helplessly, wildly, the way he’s seen cats do when they are to be dropped in water.

            Hannibal is stroking his side, gently, and is kissing his neck in a way Will would love under other circumstances. Yet these things cannot calm him. The only thing he can hold onto in the midst of it is Jenny Bell. She whose words ring through his head like funeral bells. And he wonders if she cried. When he asked her – Will yelps particularly loud after a rough shove – in the middle school, she wore a flippant expression, but since attending high school, he has heard girls talk about it. Boys talk about it. Saying they couldn’t keep the girl from crying, oh, she wailed like someone was killing her. Sobbing. Will thinks Jenny cried. Even if, to this day, she would deny it, he thinks that is the truth. And this calms him, to know that he won’t cry. No – Hannibal’s thrusts become more erratic, harried – he won’t cry. He can yell – and he does, continuously – but he won’t cry. He’s not going to puss out.

             No way.

             When Hannibal comes inside him, there is an insistent throbbing sensation and Will releases a low hiss through his teeth. Hannibal’s hips are heavy with purpose, pressing into him once, twice, again. Until he stills and the room is deathly silent but for their shared panting. In this absence of sound, Will only now realizes just how loud he had been. He looks across the room at Mischa’s portrait before letting his gaze roll upward once more.

             Slowly, Hannibal pries himself from Will. Rises barely and places a chaste kiss against Will’s upper lip, pulling it lightly. Will sighs, smiling, running trembling fingertips through Hannibal’s chest hair as he pulls back. He doesn’t realize there will be pain again when Hannibal separates them completely, but by the time it is done, Will has only time enough to give an ache-rotted groan. He winces and looks down at the mess.

             Semen and blood, more of the latter. It is on the white comforter in a cerise stain between Will’s legs and is also coating Hannibal’s pubic hair. Will looks at it with dull horror and Hannibal, of all things, is smiling. He takes more of the comforter and wipes the blood from his groin, adding more stain.

             This is perhaps what shocks Will most. In all his time spent with Hannibal Lecter, he has never seen the man add more to a mess. He has never seen this house in anything resembling common lived-in condition. Everything in its proper place at all times. Everything spotless. Once, Will spilled caramel sauce and Hannibal gave him a thinly-veiled look of disapproval. Now he is taking great care to dirty his bedclothes further. Will’s only conclusion is that he plans to throw them out.

             “S-Sorry about the mess,” Will says, his voice shot. He feels racked in pain from the waist down but waves of something not unlike pride wash over him. He touches his face. Dry. Bone-dry.

             Hannibal smiles at him, the gleam of his teeth white. “You did marvelously, Will.”

 _Marvelously._ If that isn’t high praise, Will doesn’t know what is.

             Hannibal moves to Will’s side, lying closest to the window. It is dark out and the rain has yet to stop. The wind huffs through the eaves and Will is glad they are so isolated. No one could hear him screaming. If it were anyone but Hannibal, he would be embarrassed. But he does not feel so. He feels tired. He cannot stand the thought of moving – the pain is a deterrent, but being from Hannibal’s side is a bigger one. Still.

             Will swallows, touches Hannibal’s chest again. His eyelashes flutter. “I… I have to get home before morning. Before my dad wakes up.”

             Hannibal says nothing. Strokes the curls from Will’s forehead.

             “But…” He’s tired. He’s so tired. Is it always like this after sex? The thought immediately makes him smile. _After sex._ He really is an adult now. “But maybe I could relax a little before I go.”

             “Of course.”

             He tucks himself up under Hannibal’s chin, clinging to him as much as he can without twisting up his lower body. The pain there is alive but quietly ruminating. He doesn’t want to disturb it. He doesn’t want to do anything but be here. And he falls asleep.

           

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments appreciated.


	5. Astray

A slide. Smoothness.

            Again: a slide. A smoothness. And two minute metallic clicks.

            He hears these things, even in his sleep.

 

*

 

When he opens his eyes, the first thing he feels is a headache. He’s heard about these. Hangover stuff. His father and mother often had them, before the crash. They woke up looking grey-faced and haggard and sent dark looks Will’s way if he made much more than a peep. Will sympathizes, now. There is a stabbing at the back of his head, that pierces skull and brain matter to rest at one center the size of a pinhead. He flutters his eyelashes, shifts his body.

            Then the second: below the waist. The shifting has woken that strange pain, that _deep_ pain, which was made when Hannibal was like a knife inside him. Terrible and terrific. Everything requires sacrifice. He will try not to move his lower half much, but—

            Ah, therein lies the true terror. How long has he been asleep? Panic grumbles lowly in him and as he tries to open his eyes – light, there is awful light – he realizes the light is only artificial. The lamp of the bedside table. Distantly, the rain is still pounding at the house. The wind still whistles insistently. There is dark outside the window. Not long then.

            Hannibal is here. Not in bed as Will remembers before sleeping – Will’s side is still warm from him – but standing between the foot of the bed and the dresser, his back turned to Will. He touches something unseen and looks preoccupied. Will is now open-eyed and fully aware that the pillows have been thrown off the bed and that his wrists are firmly locked in the leather restraints attached to the headboard.

            _Next time._

            Will smiles, smirks. He wants to. He wants to badly – he sees the red angry scratches along the man’s shoulder blades and thinks, _I made those, I made those_ – but the pain between his legs denies any would-be stirrings in Will’s groin. Next time will have to be another day. He needs to get home before sunrise, and if he is very kind about it, perhaps Hannibal will give him a ride in that shiny Bentley of his. Will has always wanted to see the inside.

            He winces from the pain, that in his head and lower, and presses his lips together. He thinks about it for a moment and takes a measure he feels has been long overdue: “H… Hey, Hannibal?”

            Hannibal stops. Lowers something to the dresser top and turns smoothly. He wears his slacks that were previously cast aside, and those alone. The candles on the dresser, on either side of that sleek box, are lit. It gives the room an even softer glow.

            “You’re awake,” he says.

            _Guess he doesn’t mind me using his first name now._ Will smiles. Shakes his left wrist in the restraint. “These feel fuckin good. Did you order them from a catalogue? Nowhere in town sells these, that’s for sure.”

            Hannibal doesn’t respond. Only stands there.

            “But,” Will drawls, and shakes the right one, “I kinda gotta go home. I wanna stay. I wanna do more, but I think…” His gaze lowers, to the mess he’s made on the bed. It has dried to his inner thighs and the comforter. The shape it takes looks like some withered flower missing a petal. Will gives Hannibal the best shrug he can with his arms compromised. “I don’t think I can right now.”

            “No,” Hannibal says, shaking his head evenly. “I think you are right.”

            “Could you untie me?”

            “No, Will.”

            Will blinks widely. His head hurts. But he laughs through it, rubbing the side of his face against his shoulder. The position is beginning to grow uncomfortable. “I _really_ wanna stay.”

            “I know.”

            “But I gotta get home. C’mon. I got a fuckin headache from the drinks. D’you think you could give me a ride home? Or even just down the street from it, at the corner or somethin. Walking like this…”

            Hannibal looks at Will from head to toe. He takes the sleek box from the dresser, the candles flickering as he moves past them. Will watches as he comes to the bedside, his gaze lingering briefly on Mischa’s portrait. It looks strange in the candlelight. Hannibal sits near Will’s feet with the box on his lap. He touches the sides gently, and does not look at Will when he speaks: “I was hoping that you would sleep a bit longer, Will. To be honest, you’ve caught me in a moment of surprise. Under the circumstances, I would ask if you’d like me to knock you unconscious for the remainder of this. But if I think about it rationally, it hardly makes sense. This will, quite literally, be over before you know it.”

            Hannibal has a habit of talking like this in Will’s dreams. Cryptic. He can hardly understand what he’s saying. Perhaps he could understand better if he were sleeping.

            “I… I’m not sure what you mean,” Will says, attempting to keep his smile. “My shoulders are going numb. Hey. Could you–”

            Hannibal opens the box. He positions it tilted, golden latch unhinged, the smooth velvet lining of the box revealed, and its contents. Will looks at it for a long moment and in that moment his mouth turns dry. His stomach feels hollow, though there is, continually, that stabbing rotted pain from sex. His headache proceeds in pounding waves.

            “Wha… what…”

            “My sister,” Hannibal says, meaning the few bones in the box. When Will was in middle school, there was a skeleton on display in the science room. Mr. Dayton used to call it Sam; Sam the Skeleton. Will thought it was ridiculous, and yet his eyes were always drawn whenever Mr. Dayton used Sam’s arm to point to the board or at a student. Will learned the names of all the bones in the human body. And he looks now at a femur, or a piece of it. Vertebrae, three of them, and a long shard of clavicle. Two patella, whole. The lot of them look to have been kept in good condition but there is still an odor. Fetid and raw, something secretive that speaks to Will’s gag reflex, sings to it, beckons it. Will steels himself, bites his tongue. He will not vomit. He will not—

            Suddenly, Hannibal smiles. “I miss her, the way you miss your mother. I know you understand.”

            Will feels something like a flint striking in his mind. Striking again and again. Sparks flying everywhere.

            “M-Mr. Lecter,” he says, dissolving into that name again, “I wanna go home. This really isn’t – it isn’t funny.”

            “Is it really so shocking to you, Will?” Hannibal asks. His voice is soft, relaxed. He looks above Will’s head, as if there is something to see there, and this makes Will aware of the frantic racing inside his ribcage, the way his heart is crying out for Will to move, run, now, but he can’t, he can’t. “You were going to do the exact same thing to the pastor’s daughter. Weren’t you? Did you think you were the only one God talks to? That He guides?”

            Perhaps he is waiting for Will’s ascent, but Will’s mouth has grown dry.

            Hannibal continues: “Coaxing her into trusting you. Coaxing her into needing you. Eventually, you would have taken her virginity. Her blood. You know, the easiest way to stalk prey is when it is stalking _its_ prey. You would have learned that in time. Perhaps.” He looks back into Will’s wild eyes with something like surprise, as if he did not expect Will to still be chained to the bed. “As I said, I didn’t expect you to wake up so soon. I’ll get the knife, and we’ll finish it. I won’t be—”

            _I won’t be cruel to you, Will._

            “—long,” Hannibal says, and stands again. He pushes the box to the foot of the bed, keeps it open and staring from beneath Will’s feet, like a bedtime story monster. The smell of them was not strong, barely more than a whiff, but Will swears, he swears he can smell it from where he lies. When Hannibal is almost to the threshold, Will begins thrashing in the bed, despite the headache and the jolting pain between his legs. He thrashes and pulls and screams in a way that is much frailer than the screams he released when Hannibal was inside him. Hannibal looks at him, pauses, in the doorway. “You know no one can hear you,” he says.

            Will stops, panting. Eyes wide, body sheened with sweat. “My dad will come looking for me! Don’t you know my dad will come _looking for me_?”

            Hannibal nods at him. “Yes, I suppose he will. But Mischa and I won’t be here by then.” And he leaves the room.

            Will’s breathing is loud, erratic, but he forces himself to quiet. He hears Hannibal’s bare footsteps along the thin carpet in the hall, hears them slowly diminish into nothing. He must be going to the kitchen. Will is suddenly assaulted with fragrant memories, of Hannibal in his kitchen cutting all manner of cake and pastry for Will. The way his wrist undulated with the rhythm of the knife so smoothly. Will sees that sharp gleam press into his tender flesh as opposed to cake or pie and he lets out a thin whine so brittle there is hardly a sound.

            _No_ , Will thinks.

            _No. Nononono no, damn it, I’m not going to—_

            He looks up at his right wrist. The leather restraint cuffed to the bed. The posts have an odd shape about them; a pillar up until midway, where the cuff is attached. It dips in, giving the cuff perhaps an inch up or down to slide, then bowing outward again into a sphere on top. Will could not ever hope to force the other cuff off the pillar. And his tugs have proven he cannot yank it free by force – he is spread too wide across the bed to gain any leverage.

            _I’m stuck. I’m stuck. He’s gonna—_

_What have you done, Will?_

_—fucking kill me._

            He yanks downward again for nothing more than beleaguered hope. Makes little sounds of frustration that run together. For one second, the sweat forming along every exposed plane of his body greases his hand and he thinks – his heart leaps – that he can slide free. Just one hand. It’s all he needs, just—

            And he yanks and yanks, but there was one millimeter of give and nothing more comes of it. His mind quiets, all thoughts blurring into something similar to nothingness. The cuff, the leather, is catching on the bony protrusion of his thumb joint. Pulling will not solve this. Pulling and expecting his hand to come out unscathed will not solve this.

            He cannot hear anything but the wind and rain outside. The hammering of his heart. He shuts his eyes tight, and pulls his tongue into a safe corner of his mouth so he will not bite it. Stretches his thumb up until he hits that give from his sweat. Forces it forward, forward, and pulls steadily back. His shoulder cracks, pulls. There passes a terrible second – is it a moment? – where he thinks it won’t happen. But he continues anyway and there is a distinct pop as his thumb dislocates. He grinds his teeth together as he continues to pull down out of the cuff, thumb sliding and electric pain jolting up his arm. He almost doesn’t register it when he’s loose.

            The whole arm feels numb. Will is rolling immediately to the left side, unbuckling his other wrist with four fingers, the right thumb bouncing loosely. Jumps off the bed and feels hot sick in his stomach. But he won’t throw up. He won’t. The bones are still on the bed, the candles flickering. He looks towards the bedroom door and cannot determine how long until Hannibal comes back.

            He goes to the window and throws up the sash. The dark and rain outside seems ongoing, something living that heaves and threatens to swallow him. Offers to swallow him. He thinks about the things he dreamed of doing to Abigail and looks down at the two story drop. Would that really be so bad?

            The footsteps. He thinks he hears the footsteps on the thin lining of carpet. How long has it been? How long does he have?

            On the floor are pillows from the bed, strewn haphazardly. He rushes over and grabs one, two, three, chucking them down into the rain and mud at the back end of the house. They fall near to each other. Will shoves the curtains slightly out of the window, lets them flap in the rain, and that will have to be good enough, it will have to be. He crawls naked on hands and knees – bending enlivens the hurt at his backside but that is background noise now, all distant soundtrack – under the bed, and the second he is fully under he hears the footsteps thud twice more and stop.

            Will’s breathing is erratic behind his cupped hands. There is a small space between the floor and the end of the bedspread where vision is possible. Will looks but is afraid to look. Even in his mind, which is buzzing adrenaline and pumping nothing resembling concrete thought, that rings true: he is afraid.

            Hannibal’s feet cross the room with nothing that could be called hurry. There is rainwater on the far side of the room, on the hardwood flooring. It patters in, and the curtains flap and billow. Hannibal’s feet stand in the rain for a long moment. Will thinks he is looking down, out, at the pillows.

            There is a second that stretches impossibly to feel like moments or hours. Will’s hands are cupped hard against his mouth and nose. Hannibal’s feet do not move. Will shuts his eyes tight, begging please. He isn’t sure who he is begging to.

            The second passes. Hannibal’s feet move so suddenly in a turn-around that Will nearly makes a sound. Hannibal says something Will cannot make out, so low toned is it, and strangely lilted as if not in English. The bed moves with some give and there is the gentle thud of the lacquered box against the dresser top. A smaller, softer thud follows. Then, with a terrifyingly quiet speed, Hannibal leaves the room.

            Will waits. He cannot hear the steps and therefore cannot count them but he waits. With an exhale, he shoves himself from under the bed. Looks towards the darkened doorway and all too vividly can he imagine Hannibal waiting just outside it. Waiting for Will to stand upright as he is now or worse, waiting for Will to come out into the hall.

            _No_ , Will thinks, the sound watery in his mind. He goes to the window again and looks down at the pillows he’d thrown. Still there, covered in mud and rain.

            _You have to jump_ , he thinks and immediately feels a moan coming up.

            _I’ll break something are you nuts I’ll fucking break—_

_What’s the other choice? Go downstairs? Go into that dark hallway?_

            Will doesn’t need to look back at it. He won’t do it. He won’t. He refuses.

            _Then jump._

            The choosing is the worst part, and it’s the part Hannibal has forced on him. Will grips the wet windowsill and gulps down his own saliva which tastes horribly bitter. His face twists into an expression he is not aware of. He whirls on one heel, looks at the dresser with half of the candles still flickering, the other half sodden from rain. The box of bones is there, shut, and beside it a bottle of brown glass. Liquid settled in it. Chloroform?

_I won’t draw out any suffering._

            Will feels his headache again, so strongly that it feels like an icepick at the center of his brain. Shuts his eyes tight. Opens them again.

            He opens the brown bottle and the latch of the box. Douses the bones, the filthy bones. Douses Mischa’s picture above it, shaking the bottle wildly as if it had done him some harm. Whirls to soak the curtains as well, and the dresser. He knocks the still-lit candles over and there is a soft sound of ignition as it all catches immediate flames. The result is so sudden that Will has not thought to back away and the flames lick out at his face. In reaction, he stumbles, seeing only Mischa’s pale-flower face curling and smoking as he goes wheeling backwards, against the windowsill, and out into the night, falling like a star.

 

*

 

He opens his eyes, and his entire body for one second feels safe, secure. As if he isn’t harboring cyclonic pain from his head, between his legs, his thumb, and something else which he cannot parse right now, something to do with his—

            He looks at the second story aflame, and thinks it looks beautiful.

 

*

 

A sound escapes him when he flips to his stomach. In the murky earth and pelting weather, he wriggles like a worm and feels everything hit him at once. If it were not for the fact that he thinks Hannibal is in the vicinity, he does not think he would be able to move. He thinks he would give himself up for dead. But he is not going to give Hannibal any such satisfaction.

            As the building burns above him, the idea occurs to him that perhaps Hannibal is back inside. Rushing up into the higher rooms to save his little sister from the second cindery death. Her bones charred and her likeness dashed.

            “That’s what was in the box,” Will mutters through clenched teeth. “The box from my dream.” He barely hears himself say it – it sounds only of the rain and the house creaking behind him as he continues to crawl in the darkness. He feels it insistently now: the jitter and drag of his left foot which can be nothing more than broken. Every inch further he moves, as the foot hits against buried rocks and sticks, he thinks he might pass out.

            Glass of windows begins to break. Shattering, screaming higher than the wind in the night. The flames rise and the heat from behind intensifies. If there were ever any worry in Will of the downpour smothering the fire, it is gone. Yet he doesn’t look back. He grips the muddy ground with his fingernails and pulls and knees himself onward in the darkness. Down the rise on which the house is situated. The street is a thin grey line from here, illuminated by the streetlights that glow yellow.

            Will begins whimpering, unbeknownst to him. He makes little sounds like kittens mewling, nudging against each other and their mother for warmth and milk. Another loud burst of glass shattering. A dense sound of something falling, perhaps a wall of the house. Will wants to see, wants to see it collapse into itself.

            _Don’t_ , he thinks, and he doesn’t.

            Shivering and wriggling his way to the end of the drive, he knows he cannot drag himself along the pave of the road. He makes a thin sound and struggles to his feet. His foot. He keeps the weight off his left, and wonders if it is as bad as he thought. In the cold and bare as the day he came into the world, he is entirely numb. A testing nudge with his foot against the ground tells him it is perhaps worse than he thought.

            The roar of the fire. It lights up the night, casting its color against Will’s skin. He can see the orange on his forearms, along the gooseflesh. Moaning, he begins to hop haphazardly down the road, nearly falling all the time. The sounds from the house growing louder as he moves away, not closer.

            Is Hannibal burning?

            Is Hannibal burning in the house, clutching the bones of his sister?

            Or is he driving towards Will? Are those headlights he sees cast from behind from that black Bentley and is he going to snatch Will from the side of the road – injured and vulnerable? Is it Hannibal’s lights flashing in Will’s wide-eyed face as he turns to meet his end?

            _I can’t do this anymore_ , Will thinks.

            The lights are so bright. They swallow him up, and Will lets them.

 

*

_Will?_

_Will, what have you done?_

 

*

 

“You’re fine, Will. Can you hear me? You’re going to be just—”

 

*

 

_Gored._

 

*

 

Will wakes with a word on his lips, which he cannot remember. He opens his eyes and is immediately blinded by some florescence. Not daylight. He groans, tries to move away from it, and feels a strong hand on his arm.

            Will begins screaming, thrashing.

            “Will! Will, stop, you’re going to—”

            “Let go of me!” His voice is raw, red. “Let go, fucking _let go_!”

            “ _Will_!”

            That voice. He remembers it from years and years of life, and the light suddenly loses its intensity. Will’s eyes focus and he looks at his side to find his father: harried, eyes bloodshot and black hair wild. There is so much grey in it. Has he always looked this way? So _old_? Has he?

            Will pants harshly, labored. He looks at the man’s hand on his wrist, over an IV that is lodged into a vein on his hand. Patches of tape keeping it there. The room comes to him all at once, a hospital room. Smells of antiseptic. Will lying in a bed, the feel of a paper nightgown and thin bedsheets around him. His father half-sitting, half-risen from a seat nearby, and he looks at Will as if he has just come back from the dead.

            “Dad,” Will croaks.

            “I’m here, Will. Everything’s fine. You just need to calm down.”

            Will looks down at his hands again. The thumb has been pulled and set. His foot is lifted and bandaged so tightly there is no room to even wiggle his toes. The rest of him feels far off, the pain separated from him by drugs.

            “Where’s Mr. Lecter?” he asks, avoiding his father’s gaze. It is slowly transforming into a look Will has not often seen but will get to know: overwhelming pity. What has not occurred to Will yet is the fact that his body was catalogued of injuries while he was out and that his father is aware of what Hannibal Lecter has done to him. All of what he has done. “What happened to…”

            “They have some questions.”

            “They?”

            His father motions out the open door. There are half-shadows there, and bits of uniform Will can tell from his bed. Policemen mulling about. Will begins to breathe labored again and he grits his teeth.

            “I only did what I had to—”

            “Shh. I know that, Will, we all know that. They just want to find him.”

            “What? What d’you mean?” Will saw it so clearly in his mind’s eye. As if it had happened in front of him. Hannibal going back into the house and burning alive. “He died in the fire.”

            His father says nothing. In an hour, after Will has rested and Dr. Vedall has seen to him, the police chief and fire chief will ask him questions, sitting where his father does now. His father will be in the room. And they will say they are searching through the ruins of the house – all of it has burned, all of it but a few pillars – but cannot find any human remains. Will says nothing. They ask him to describe the night in full detail: from when he first snuck out of his house to when the fire trucks picked him up on that long stretch of road. Will looks at his father sitting in the far corner of the room, hollowed out. Will says nothing.

 

*          *          *

 

The classroom is silent, save the odd tap of pencil tops against the desks. Soft pats of sneaker soles against the tile. The heater, a clunky box-like machine at the back corner of the room, kicks on and whirs. Bits of paper and dead bugs fly out of the vents like an ill cloud of omen when each of them are first activated.

            Will sits half hunched over in his chair, gnawing the blue pen between pointed kitten teeth. The algebra test in front of him is the last before the exams in two weeks. The numbers and letters dance in front of him, purling into something unrecognizable. And he wonders, distantly, if he ever knew any of this at all. If any of the things Ms. Rollins had been saying all semester – which he thought privately would thread themselves into his subconscious as the most miniscule of details do – had ever touched him at all.

            From beneath a copse of curls, Will glances about the room. Classmates who are, in Will’s opinion, horribly stupid, seem to be having an easy time of it. They scribble down answers, show their work. Will stares for perhaps too long and catches Ms. Rollin’s brown gaze from up at her desk.

            She mouths: _Eyes down._

            Will looks back at his paper. Yet he can feel other eyes slowly rising to settle on him. He can feel them like bugs crawling on his skin. Brought to life from the old heater and tramping up and down his arms. Will bites the pen until it bleeds in his mouth. His tongue is blue.

            Perhaps he’s not as smart as he thought.

 

*

 

During study hall, the blank paper that Will turned in to Ms. Rollins is still idly on his mind. He doesn’t know why. It doesn’t really matter if he – _that_ he – failed. It doesn’t really matter at all.

            He sits in the pale blue of Principal Downey’s office. The principal, a meek man with a sleek bald head and glasses, sits behind a modest desk and looks from Will to Abigail Hobbs and then back to Will. In another chair off to the side of the desk, like an afterthought, is the guidance counselor Mr. Pewter.

            “I first want to say,” Principal Downey begins and Will thinks of how the children call him Down Syndrome behind his back, “that we’re all really proud of you for returning so quickly, Will. Two weeks isn’t a lot of time and what with the mental and physical strains you endured…”

            Abigail looks at Will, then to his crutches that rest by his chair. His left foot is wrapped securely in a blue cast which has scribbles that look like signatures in Sharpie, but are really only Will’s own doodles.

            Will makes a sound of dismissal.

            “We just wanted to make sure everything was okay between everyone,” says Mr. Pewter. He is a big man but his voice is gentle. Primarily focused on Abigail, sitting prim and uncomfortable. “You know. Some words were had before your, uh, convalescence, Will.”

            _Convalescence_ , he thinks.

            “And it’s not that we want to belittle what you’ve gone through, what you must’ve _been_ going through at the time,” Principal Downey adds.

            Mr. Pewter waves a hand. “Certainly not!”

            “But we all have to exist in this school together, and try to be kind to one another. Abigail, do you have anything you want to say to Will?”

            Will looks at her, one eyebrow slightly raised. He doesn’t know what he expected to find in her gaze but whatever it was, there is nothing of the lovelorn look she used to give him. There is only fear there, and yes, pity as well, that which Will gets ample doses of at home in the dreary of his house. She wrings her hands together tightly.

            “Will… Will, I…”

            He sits there, staring at her. Motionless. She catches his gaze and seems to think better of her words.

            She says, “I’m glad you’re all right.” Turns to the principal and guidance counselor. “Is it all right if I go now? I still have some reading to do.”

            They allow this, and Abigail walks quickly past Will, looking careful to not upset his crutches. When the door shuts, Will continues to sit, as he knows this meeting was not really about what he said to Abigail Hobbs at all. The two men look at him with the same wavering gaze that has plagued him ever since the hospital. The town is rife with it.

            Principal Downey says, “Are you all right? Will?”

            Will shrugs.

 

*

 

At first there were nightmares, so vivid and raging that Will would wake up screaming with his father bursting into the room, saying, “What is it, Will? What’s wrong?”

            The first time it happened, Will was still half asleep and heard his father say, _What have you done, Will? What have you done?_ And he screamed so long and loud that his voice broke and degenerated like a dying radio. He panted harsh in his father’s ear as the man encircled him in a warm hug. He smelled strange, bad, like leather and gin and Will could smell it on the man’s breath and he pushed him away.

            In the dark, they looked at each other, hunched like monsters on the bed.

            And in the morning, the two were like reluctant lovers. Trapped in a silent waltz around the sunlight-filled house, weary and sad, and regretting the things they’d done in the night. A few more days passed with the nightmares and the gin and the bourbon smell of his father intensified. He went in late to work or came home early. For Will’s lame foot, he drove Will to school and drove him home, and one day he looked pristine as if he had not been landscaping at all but sitting in the empty house, sitting alone in that chair.

            When the nightmares reached their peak, when they were such that the nightmares were _having_ nightmares, Will hobbled from his bed in the night, down the hall. Past the room where his mother’s dress clung tight to the manikin. Into the room his father and mother used to share. It was dark but for a thin beam of streetlight through the parted curtains. The man’s breathing signaled him awake.

            Will continued into the room. He had yet to acclimate to the boot that had become his foot. It made every possible noise bumping into things: the side of the end table, the foot of the bed. He crawled into the bed, settling on top of the covers and lay there.

            His father was very still. After a long silence in which they lay motionless together, the man reached over and set his large hand on Will’s frail ribcage. He felt the beat of Will’s heart and seemed content with that. He turned over and slept. Will slept, dreamless.

 

*

 

During the physical education period, Will sits on one of the benches around the side of the blacktop. The teachers sit on benches apart from him. He thinks they are being careful not to mother him overmuch but they keep their eye on him, and they yell at his classmates who kick the balls too hard or too wildly.

            In the December winds, Will is bundled in his coat with a woolen hat jammed on his head. He has never been this cold before. Though he wears appropriate layers, the wind whips through him and turns his bones—

            _my sister_

            —to ice.

            Not far from him, idle sophomores stand and talk. They look at Will as if he is a toothless lion who once roamed the savannah, terrorizing all in his path. Those looks say, _Not so tough now, are ya?_

            They will say things. Every now and then, they will say things. Whether quickly in the bustling change of classes in the halls, or just as Will is waiting on the outer curb for his father’s red Ram. Whispered. Things like _Did it hurt?_ and _Did you want it?_ and _Devilworshipper_ is sometimes thrown his way.

            Will wonders idly if his classmates will resort to violence. He would be easy to harm. Kick his crutches out from under him, or toss his textbooks in the gutters, the trash bins. Will has been assigned Avery Thurmson as a book-carrier between classes. Avery does his duty quietly and with nothing in the way of outward ill will. But Will can imagine him fantasizing about it: about turning a blind eye as older boys come and kick Will down.

            Will supposes he’s entitled to at least that much.

 

*

 

Hannibal Lecter’s disappearance is as insistently felt as the frigid air settling on White Hill. Though Will cannot make it out to the burned site of his house, he goes there in his mind to look through the rubble and ash. He searches fervently for any sign of Hannibal’s body, even teeth. Small town policemen and firemen are not so thorough as they ought to be, he thinks. They could have missed anything.

            He tries to comfort himself with this, even as he sits solemn and quiet in church on Sunday morning. His father beside him in their usual pew. The man smells of coffee and gin. Up at the pulpit, Pastor Garrett looks out at everyone as he speaks, but seems to avoid Will and his father. Or perhaps this is all in Will’s mind.

            The pastor says, “Did anyone ever sell you a bill of goods? The devil’s been doing that for a thousand years to all of mankind. He will coerce you, tempt you. He will tell you lies. ‘Enjoy _all_ of life,’ the liar says. ‘You only go around once.’ And yet we know there is more to life than this life – we know that _this_ life is preparation for the _next_ one.

            “You’d think we’d be secure in that by now. The devil lies; he’s been lying for eternity. But we, as humans, are weak. We’re weak, and susceptible. God, in His wisdom, did not make us strong in and of ourselves.  

            “John tells us how we can be led astray in regards to our spirits. ‘Be not led astray about righteousness. Be not led astray about the devil. Be not led astray about the son of God.’ I want you to take in that first one. Be not led astray about _righteousness_. He who does what is right is righteous. And we know what is right – how?” He raises his Bible, high, high above his head. “And we know what is wrong how?”

            In response, many people in the pews raise their own Bibles. Will keeps his in hand. As does his father.

            “That’s right,” the pastor says. “Be not led astray by false prophets. And be not led astray by your own hearts which are fickle and flawed.”

            There is a second in which Will locks eyes with Garrett. From across the room and the height difference from down on the floor to the summit of the pulpit. The others in attendance send their gazes across. Will feels himself trembling and suddenly his father’s hand is settled securely over his own. Will looks down at it. He shuts his eyes and breathes out. He squeezes his father’s hand.

           

*

 

One of the nightmares he had was a memory.

            Hannibal’s kitchen drenched in golden dusklight. Scents of chocolate, deep dark chocolate, in the air. On the counter sat a triple-layer chocolate cake just dripping with ganache. The sheen of it was like a mirror and Will looked at himself: curls about his ears, eyes agleam, and Hannibal standing behind him, arms wrapped around him. Holding Will steady as the knife in Will’s hand slowly pierced the cake, moving in a methodical downward motion.

            Hannibal leaned down into his ear and whispered that he used to bake cakes for his sister. That is how he is so good at it.

            Will said he loved cake.

            Hannibal said he knew.

            The nightmare was sweet and soft. Hannibal raised Will up onto the counter and kissed the chocolate from his mouth. Will clutched him, murmuring and begging to be taken. But Hannibal had restraint. Hannibal was waiting for the fruit to ripen.

            When Will woke from that dream, his face was burning with shame, with agony.

 

*

 

On a Monday, the tests are returned. Ms. Rollins walks the small aisles between the desks demurely, passing out the papers face-down. Her round face betrays little. Will watches as his is set down before him, and he flips it over and gets what he expects, which is a large red zero and those same empty spaces where he answered none of the questions. In the same red print, there is a note at the bottom of the page:

            _Are you all right, Will?_

            Will begins to breathe quickly. His face turns hot, the way it does in the aftermath of his nightmares, his daydreams, when he remembers how head-over-heels he was, how far gone he was. When he thought he could have his cake and eat it too. When Will looks up, he sees a few heads whirl back to their own papers. And yet some stay turned where they are, directed at Will. Huge brown and blue and green and black eyes beneath all manner of hair styles. Will’s brow knits, and he turns to the head of the class where Ms. Rollins looks at him.

            Just looks at him.

            The test paper crumbles in his hand. He slams the fist down onto the tabletop and many classmates jolt in their seats. Ms. Rollins’ eyes widen.

            “Will—”

            “Fine,” he says, voice wavering between speaking calmly and with fevered hurry. “Fine, okay. You win. You _all_ win. You want me to talk about it, I’ll fuckin talk about it. Yeah, he fucked me and yeah, I let him. I wanted it. What, you guys think it was rape? He didn’t kidnap me, I _walked_ in there. And I _crawled_ out. And I didn’t know he was crazy. But neither did any of you. Not the pastor, not all the adults at church. He was nice to me. He made me feel good. Before he tried to slice me up and **_sacrifice_** me. I went over there because I wanted to. I wanted—”       

            _I wanted you for me_

            “—I wanted to feel good,” he says, voice scraping to a whisper. He takes a swallow over the lump in his throat. Everyone continues to stare at him, expressions of horror and disgust. Will didn’t know people his age could show such disgust, but here it is, written plain as day. Will takes up his crutches and he leaves the room, waiting outside for Avery Thurmson to come and carry his books.

 

*

 

Will lies in his own bed.

            On the drive home from school, his father was swerving lightly on the road. He smelled strongly of alcohol and he looked drawn-faced and haggard but not dirty. He hasn’t looked dirty for three days now.

            Will looked continually at the road, and asked, “You got fired, huh?”

            His father said nothing.

            When they arrived home, there was a message on the answering machine, blinking madly. His father looked at it, bypassed it. He asked what Will wanted for dinner. They lay now in separate rooms and Will cannot sleep. He thinks perhaps the man’s smell of liquor which initially reminded him of Hannibal, has somehow wormed its way into Will’s system. Makes it so he can sleep without nightmares, or just sleep at all. He is superstitious enough to believe it, and he thinks he will go to the man’s bed again.

            He will wean himself from it tomorrow night. Perhaps.

            His eyes drift shut. Minutes pass, or hours in which he comes in and out of sleep. Upon surfacing once more, just barely, he feels a chill and wonders why. He is overcome by a sudden constriction around his body and instinctively flails out. Limbs in an array, eyes now wide and there is a strong hand against his mouth. He smells leather and gin and tries to cry out but there is no exhale with which to do it.

            The window is open and Will is dragged from his bed and over the sill. He falls with a muted thud into the dead garden his mother once tended. Inanely, he thinks:

            _Some savior I turned out to be._

            The motion continues. The hand is strong, sure against his mouth, silencing him, and he is dragged from the mulch and weeds out into the side yard. The night is dark, the sky peppered with stars. Will’s eyes on them and on the shadow he can half-see as it pulls him away.

            Through the underbrush and the overgrown grass. Under the shelter of trees which line every yard and keep houses from those behind. Will looks helplessly at Ms. Everson’s house, as quiet and dark as all the others. There is snarling pain in his foot as his cast bumps against rocks and tree bark. The swat against his open eyes of bristles and needles. And there is a sudden and terrible smack at the back of his head as he is flung into a strong, sturdy tree trunk. Will’s eyes roll in his head and, for an instant, he sees the stars whirling overhead through the sparse and ink-black boughs.

            Hannibal is crouching in front of him. Will cannot see the man proper, but some figure which is at once catlike and massive above him. Black as the trees and illusive as shadow. Will feels cold steel at his throat, a promise, and the hand over his mouth moves away.

            Will thinks, _If I scream would anyone get here in time? Not in time to save me. Just in time to catch him. Would they?_

            Hannibal’s voice is soft, sedate. “Did you think you would get away with it, Will?”

            Will’s breathing is loud, ragged.

            “Did you think I would leave you in peace after you murdered my sister?”

            “Mur—”

            The blade presses just so. Will can feel himself bleed at the side of his throat. He wants to tell Hannibal that he’s crazy, so far gone there’s no help for him, so insane that he thinks people can murder bones, fragments of life. But he feels Hannibal’s hand tremble, and he knows that would be a lie. As he crawled on the ground away from the burning house, as he pulled himself towards the road, there was murder on his mind. He wanted both of them dead, in a magnificent explosion, he wanted to incinerate even their ashes. Everything he could say to Hannibal, everything he dreamed of saying to the man in his time since the loss of his virginity—

            _Why did you trick me?_

_You wanted to kill me._

_You never liked me at all._

_I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you._

            —he thinks would be insincere. Abigail could say the same things to him. Perhaps these were what went through her mind in Principal Downey’s office. When she looked at him and then looked away. These things, Will thinks Abigail has figured out, don’t matter. They don’t matter at all.

            Will says, softly, “Y-Yeah. Yeah, I killed her. I’d do it again.”

            It is so exciting to tell the truth. His heart races with fear and exhilaration, and he drinks in Hannibal’s silence like the fine bourbon it is. Will lets the stillness hang between them for another moment before jerking his left arm out, dislodging the knife from his throat. Punches with his right fist and feels the connect of cheekbone and nose. He flails out, cast kicking, fingers outstretched and clawing madly. If he is going to die, he might as well fight it out.

            Hannibal backhands him and Will feels himself smiling, bloody-toothed.

            _It’s stupid but…_

            Will scratches out again, tries to grab a fistful of hair, anything, but Hannibal takes his wrist like a branch and bends it behind his back. Will’s face is in the dirt and grass, pressed against dry roots. Hannibal’s knee deep in his back. Grip on his wrist like iron.

            _I think this’s all my fault. I think Dad…_

            Hannibal muffles Will’s mouth again and breaks his wrist. A snapping sound that would be clean, crisp, if not for what it was.

            _I think he lost his job because of me._

            Will remembers breaking his other arm falling from a tree. He was nine years old. It was one year after he kissed Abigail Hobbs. It was five years before he was fucked bloody into a mattress. Even as he loses consciousness, he is smirking.

            _Sorry._

 

*

_I wanted to see them both burn._

_Even their ashes._

 

*

 

“Will?”

 

*

 

_God helps those who help themselves._

 

*

 

“Will? Are you all right?”

            He recognizes that voice. It brings back smells, textures, tastes; all with an immediacy which is overwhelming in the softest way. Down by the dead end in the high summertime, when the mosquitoes clung to the sweat on his forehead, when blurs stuck to his white socks. A sifting of barbeque on the wind, over lush and blooming treetops. And the trickling sound of the Marsh County River which was really only a line of sludge plumped by rainwater and runoff. He remembers trying to catch her when she slipped on the drainage pipe. When she stood on it, haloed by the setting sun, and her brown hair was afrizz, glowing. He held his hand out to her.

            “Rabbit,” he says, the word dry on his lips. He sees her before he even opens his eyes and she is sitting across from him in a hospital room. Her shoulders are slight and hunched. She wears pink pajamas under a winter coat. Those huge front teeth gnaw at her lower lip.

            Will lies in the bed, thin covers around his body. He is in a paper gown and his arm is set in a cast – white, and plain. He looks at it, and the IV in his other hand where it had been weeks prior. He thinks, _I gotta be dreaming. Just another crazy nightmare._

            Then he looks up at her and furrows his brow. “Why does everyone keep askin me that?”

            “Asking… asking you what?”

            “Am I all right? Am I all right. I’m in a _hospital_ ,” Will says, too tired to sneer. “Of course I’m not fuckin all right.”

            Abigail looks confused. She pinches at the sleeve of her coat. “I, uh,” she whispers, “I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you were _awake_.”

            “Oh.” Will presses his lips together. Touching briefly at the new cast, he changes the subject: “What’re you doing here anyway? I guess the police must’ve found me. I don’t remember what happened, just…”

            Abigail looks towards the open door. There are voices, and footsteps. “Just?” she asks.

            “Mr. Lecter,” Will says. “He did this. I guess he got away again.”

            Abigail begins to rub the heels of her hands against her knees. Feet tapping against the tile on the floor. “I should go get daddy. I’ll tell him you’re awake now.”

            “Your dad’s here?” Will watches her as she stands. “Hey, where’s my dad? Can you get him in here?”

            “I’ll get daddy and Dr. Vedall,” she says and rounds the foot of the bed. Will catches her by the arm before she is quite out of reach. “Will, really—”     

            “What’re you _doing_ here, Abigail?”

            She stands there, caught by him. He is weak, can feel no strength in his grasp. Yet she is retained in her role, and he knows she will not go until he releases her. She says, with a wavering blue gaze, “We’re your emergency contacts.”

            “But…” His hand slowly relaxes, and she wastes no time in leaving the room. With a flash, her hair is gone around the corner and there are more voices which rise and shush almost simultaneously. Will feels a frost in his lower stomach, and he is quietly methodical as he gently undoes the tape around the needle and pulls it bloody from his hand. It spurts, dribbles. He unwraps himself from the thin sheets. On the floor, his bare feet touch and he moves to stand. Wobbling as a newborn fawn. The back of his paper gown open, and he can feel the winter chill even through the hospital walls.

            Out of the room, he is confronted with a place he has known for a long time. The desolate halls with off-green and off-white tile repeating infinitely. People he recognizes at middle of the hall: Abigail, the pastor, the pastor’s wife, who is still in a housecoat, her hair in a bundle of pins. They speak in low tones with each other and Dr. Vedall who is in white.

            They seem to see him, all at once. His limp, casted foot scuffing the floor, his bleeding hand, his wounded arm.

            “Where’s my dad?” Will asks.

            Dr. Vedall comes to him, just a foot, before the pastor holds a hand out. He continues the walk to Will, his blue eyes an earlier version of his daughter’s. When he is near, he places a hand on Will’s thin shoulder. Then squeezes it. He bends a bit, and takes Will into his arms.

            “Where’s my dad?” Will asks.

            “Will, son.”

            Will attempts to put some distance between them. Garrett does not allow it. Further down the hall, Will can see policemen and firemen mulling about.

            Garrett says into his ear, “There was a fire at your house.”

            “Where’s my dad?” Will asks. Then: “Is he hurt?”

            Dr. Vedall has come to join them. And Will thinks this must not be a nightmare after all, but some strange déjà vu. It was like this, when his mother died. Dr. Vedall standing before him and saying in his soothing good-doctor tones that they cannot let Will see the body. Only now he does not say _mother_ , he says _father_ , and Garrett keeps his hold on Will, tighter, as if he expects Will to thrash or scream or faint. He wants to hold Will up if he should fall. Will doesn’t fall. And in twenty years, he will live not far from here. Nearer eastern Tennessee, where the lees are dark at the foot of the Appalachians. Where the winters are dense, and the town is quiet, small, not unlike this one. He will spend many nights alone in his home with the warmth of a fireplace at his back and the warmth of alcohol in his stomach, burning a tract down his throat. He will squeeze his eyes shut as he swallows and he will remember this night. And he will weep then the way he does now.

           

           

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got every reason to feel like I'm that bitch!
> 
> www.metaphorgoneawry.tumblr.com


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